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3    1153    000H6573    2 


^p  Justin  QMitiffor. 


NARRATIVE  AND  CRITICAL  HISTORY  OF  AMER- 
ICA. With  Bibliographical  and  Descriptive  Essays  on 
its  Historical  Sources  and  Authorities.  Profusely  illus- 
trated with  portraits,  maps,  facsimiles,  etc.  Edited  by 
Justin  Winsor,  Librarian  of  Harvard  University,  with 
the  cooperation  of  a  Committee  from  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society,  and  with  the  aid  of  other  learned 
Societies.  In  eight  royal  8vo  volumes.  Each  volume, 
net,  iJsSo;  sheep,  fiet,  J6.50;  half  morocco,  net,  57-So- 
(Sold  only  by  subscription  for  the  entire  set.) 

READER'S  HANDBOOK  OF  THE  AMERICAN  REV- 
OLUTION.    i6mo,  $1.25. 

WAS  SHAKESPEARE  SHAPLEIGH?  i6mo,  rubri- 
cated parchment  paper,  75  cents. 

CHRISTOPHER  COLUMBUS,  and  how  he  received  and 
imparted  the  Spirit  of  Discovery.  With  portraits  and 
maps.    8vo,  gilt  top,  J4.00. 

CARTIER  TO  FRONTENAC.  A  Study  of  Geographical 
Discovery  in  the  interior  of  North  America,  in  its  his- 
torical relations,  1534-1700.  With  full  cartographical 
Illustrations  from  Contemporary  Sources.  8vo,  gilt 
top,  $4.00. 

THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN.  The  Struggle  in  America  be- 
tween England  and  France,  1697-1763.  With  full  car- 
tographical Illustrations  from  Contemporary  Sources. 
8vo,  gilt  top,  $4.00. 

THE  WESTV\^ARD  MOVEMENT:  The  Struggle  for  the 
Trans-Allegheny  Region,  1763-1797.  With  full  carto- 
graphical Illustrations  from  Contemporary  Sources. 
Svo,  $4.00. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY, 
Boston  and  New  York. 


d)e  jHtssisstppi  Basin 


THE 

STRUGGLE    IN   AMERICA 

BETWEEN   ENGLAND 

AND  FRANCE 

1697—1763 


WITH  FULL  CARTOGRAPHICAL  ILLUSTRA- 
TIONS  FROM    CONTEMPORARY  SOURCES 


BY 


JUSTIN   WINSOR 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,   MIFFLIN   AND    COMPANY 

189S 


■7 


Copyright,  1895, 
Bt  JUSTIN  "WINSOR. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  River.nde  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  and  Company. 


To 
CLEMENTS   ROBERT  MARKHAM,   C.  B.,   F.  R.  S. 

President  of  the  Royal  Geogbaphical  Society,  London. 


Dear  Mr.  Markham, — 

Such  an  observer  as  you  are  knows  how  the  physiography  of  a  conti- 
nent influences  its  history ;  how  it  opens  avenues  of  discovery,  directs 
lines  of  settlement,  and  gives  to  the  natural  rulers  of  the  earth  their 
coign  of  vantage.  I  would  not  say  that  there  are  not  other  compelling 
influences  ;  but  no  other  control  is  so  steady.  If  we  appreciate  such  a 
dominating  power  in  subjecting  the  earth  to  man's  uses,  we  cannot  be 
far  from  discerning  the  pith  of  history,  particvdarly  of  those  periods 
which  show  the  work  of  pioneers. 

The  society  over  which  you  hold  so  signal  an  authority  gives  itself 
to  the  study  of  geography  as  elucidating  many  problems  in  man's  des- 
tiny. There  is,  then,  a  fitness,  I  trust,  in  your  accepting  this  homage 
from  one  who  is  enrolled  in  that  society's  foreign  membership,  and 
also  is  your  friend  and  servant, 


Harvard  University, 
March,  1895. 


CONTENTS   AND   ILLUSTRATIONS. 


CHAPTER  I. 


FAQX 


The  Mississippi  Basin  at  the  End  of  the  Seventeenth  Cen- 
tury   1 

Illustrations  :  The  Natchez  Country,  after  Danville  (1732),  7  ; 
The  Upper  Mississippi  and  the  Mille  Lacs  Region,  after  Hum- 
phreys and  Abbot  (1861),  9  ;  The  Ohio  Basin,  after  the  Same,  19  ; 
The  Green  Bay  Portage,  after  Marcel's  Reproductions,  23  ;  Col- 
den's  Map,  showing  the  Northern  Portages,  25  ;  The  Divide 
between  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Mississippi  Basin,  by  Hum- 
phreys and  Abbot,  27  ;  The  Northern  Portages  in  Joliet's  Time, 
after  Marcel's  Reproductiom,  28,  29  ;  The  Heads  of  the  Yellow- 
stone and  Snake  Rivers,  after  Humphreys  and  Abbot,  31. 

CHAPTER  II. 

Iberville's  Expedition.     1697-1700 33 

Illustrations  :  The  Mississippi  in  La  Salle's  Time,  34  ;  The  Gulf 
Coast  defectively  mapped  (1728),  35  ;  Portrait  of  Iberville,  37  ; 
Roggeveen's  Map  of  the  Gulf  Coast  (1675),  39  ;  The  Lower 
Mississippi  Basin,  after  Humphreys  and  Abbot  (1861),  41  ; 
Coxe's  Map  of  Carolana  (1722),  44,  45  ;  Mitchell's  Map  (1755) 
of  Colonel  Welch's  Route  (1698),  47  ;  Danville's  Carte  de 
la  Louisiane,  49 ;  Jefferys'  Lower  Mississippi  (1759),  50 ; 
Homann's  Lower  Mississippi  with  Tonty's  Route,  51  ;  Jefferys' 
Map  of  Fort  L'Huillier  and  the  Trail  to  the  Pawnees,  53  ;  La 
Salle's  and  Iberville's  Explorations,  55  ;  Portrait  of  Bienville, 
67  ;  Danville's  Map  of  the  Gulf  Coast  (1732),  59. 

CHAPTER   III. 

Throughout  the  Valley.    1700-1709 61 

Illustrations  :  Delisle's  Map  of  the  Gulf  Coast,  75  ;  Franque- 
lin's  Map  of  the  Mississippi,  77  ;  La  Potherie's  Carte  Generalle 
de  la  Nouvelle  France  (1722),  79  ;  The  Mille  Lacs  Region,  81  ; 
La  Hontan's  Riviere  Longue,  82. 


VI  CONTENTS  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

Crozat  and  Trade.    1710-1719 83 

Illustrations  :  French  Soldiers  (1710),  84 ;  Red  River  Basin, 
after  Humphreys  and  Abbot's  Basins  of  the  Mississippi  (1861), 
89  ;  Broutiu's  Carte  des  Natchitoches  (1722),  91  ;  Homann's 
Map  (1720),  showing  the  Routes  of  St.  Denis,  93  ;  The  Red 
River  Region,  after  Danville's  Louisiane,  95  ;  Quivira,  etc.,  by 
Palairet  and  Delaroche,  97. 


CHAPTER  V. 

The  Mississippi  Bubble.    1714-1720 99 

Illustrations  :  Portrait  of  John  Law,  100  ;  Bill  of  the  Banque 
Royale,  103  ;  Country  of  the  Padoucas,  etc.,  105  ;  Law's  Map  of 
Louisiana,  107  ;  Arms  of  the  Mississippi  Company,  107 ; 
Quinquempoix,  109. 

CHAPTER    VI. 

The  Barriers  of  Louisiana.    1710-1720 Ill 

Illustrations  :  The  Upper  Mississippi,  from  the  Gentleman's 
Magazine  (1763),  113  ;  The  Great  Lake  of  the  West,  from  Pop- 
ple's Map  (1732),  113  ;  Danville's  Map  of  the  Upper  Lakes, 
117  ;  Map  of  the  Illinois  Country,  119;  Kaskaskia  and  its  Vicin- 
ity, 121  ;  Governor  Spotswood's  Route  to  the  Valley  of  Virginia, 
129  ;  Indian  Map  of  Traders'  Paths,  132. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Charlevoix  and  his  Observations.    1720-1729 136 

Illustrations  :  Lafitau's  Map  of  North  America,  137  ;  De  Fer's 
Map  of  Santa  Fd  and  the  Far  Country,  139  ;  The  Missouri  and 
the  Country  of  the  Padoucas,  by  Bowen  and  Gibson,  140  ;  Dr. 
James  Smith's  Map  of  Louisiana,  142,  143  ;  Danville's  Upper 
Mississippi,  147 ;  Dumont's  Plan  of  New  Orleans,  151  ;  The 
Middle  Mississippi,  by  Bowen  and  Gibson,  153  ;  Mitchell's  Map 
of  the  Cenis'  Country,  155. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

Along  the  Appalachians.    1720-1727 160 

Illustration  :  The  Indian  Trail  from  the  Shenandoah,  169. 


CONTENTS  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS.  vii 


CHAPTER   IX. 

The  Rivalries  of  France,  England,  and  Spain.    1730-1740  .    .  171 
Illustrations  :  Keith's  Map  of  Virginia,  181 ;  Fort  Rosalie  and 
Vicinity,  189. 

CHAPTER  X. 

The  Search  for  the  Sea  of  the  West.    1727-1753 193 

Illustrations  :  JefPerys'  Map  of  V^rendrye's  Forts  and  the 
River  of  the  West,  195  ;  Bowen  and  Gibson's  Sioux  Country, 
(1763),  197  ;  Vaugondy's  Amerique  Septentrionale  (1750),  205  ; 
Buache's  Mer  de  I'Ouest  (1752),  207  ;  Delisle's  Carte  d' Ame- 
rique (1722),  208  ;  Buache's  Mer  de  I'Ouest  (1752),  209  ;  Le 
Rouge's  River  of  the  West  (1746),  215. 

CHAPTER    XI. 

War  and  Truce.    1741-1748 218 

Illustration  :  Kitchin's  Map  of  the  French  Settlements  (1747), 
226,  227. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

The  Portals  of  the  Ohio  Valley.    1740-1749 229 

Illustrations  :  Parts  of  Fry  and  Jefferson's  Map  of  Virginia, 
231,  233,  237;  Lewis  'Evans's  Map  of  Pensilvania  (1749),  240, 
241  ;  Evans's  Middle  British  Colonies  (1758),  244,  245  ;  An- 
drews's New  Map  of  the  United  States  (1783),  247  ;  One  of 
C^loron's  Plates,  253  ;  Map  of  C^loron's  March,  256,  257. 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

Louisiana  and  its  Indians.    1743-1757 259 

Illustrations  :  Map  of  the  Erie  Portages,  261 ;  Adair's  Map  of 
the  Indian  Nations,  262,  263  ;  Duniont's  Chickasaw  and  Choc- 
taw Country,  265  ;  Danville's  North  America,  showing  Position 
of  Southern  Tribes,  267  ;  Le  Page  du  Pratz's  Map  (1757),  269  ; 
Timberlake's  Cherokee  Country,  270  ;  Indian  Map,  by  Kitchin, 
of  the  Cherokee  Country,  272,  273  ;  Covens  and  Mortier's 
Cherokee  Country  (1758),  275. 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

Undeclared  War.    1750-1754 277 

Illustrations  :  Boundary  of  Carolina  and  Virginia,  278 ; 
Mitchell's  Frontier  Settlements  (1775),  281  ;   Colonel   Cresap's 


Vlll  CONTENTS   AND  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Map  of  the  Sources  of  the  Potomac,  283  ;  Mitchell's  Map  of 
the  Route  of  Christopher  Gist,  291  ;  Danville's  Ohio  Valley,  295  ; 
Hutchins's  Rapids  of  the  Ohio,  296  ;  Howell's  Map  of  the 
Freuch  Creek  Route,  297  ;  Sketch  of  the  Freuch  Creek  Route, 
298,  299  ;  Le  Rouge's  Map  of  the  Route  from  Duquesne,  301  ; 
Evans's  Middle  British  Colonies,  corrected  by  Pownall,  304,  305  ; 
Part  of  Fry  and  Jefferson's  Map  of  Virginia,  313. 

CHAPTER   XV. 

The  Rival  Claimants  for  North  America.    1497-1755.    .    .    .  316 
Illustrations  :  Map  from  the  Memoires  des  Commissaires  du  Roi 
(1757),  319,  320,  321  ;   Part   of  Bowen  and   Gibson's   North 
America  (1763),  328,  329  ;  Mitchell's  Map  of  the  Wabash  River 
(1755),  333. 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

The  Anxieties  and  Plans  of  1754 338 

Illustration  :  Charles  Thomson's  Map,  346. 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

The  Alleghany  Portals.    1755 352 

Illustration  :  Jefferys'  Map  of  Braddock's  March,  358,  359. 

CHAPTER   XVIII. 

Two  Dismal  Years,  1756,  1757 372 

Illustrations  :  Pouchot's  Map  of  the  Frontiers,  375  ;  Emanuel 
Bowen's  Map  of  the  Country  of  the  Southern  Indians,  383. 

CHAPTER   XIX. 

The  Ohio  and  St.  Lawrence  won.    1758-1759 385 

Illustrations  :  Plan  of  Fort  Duquesne,  391 ;  Fort  Massac  and 
Vicinity,  392  ;  The  Lower  Ohio,  393. 

CHAPTER   XX. 
The  Transition  from  War  to  War.    1760-1762 403 


CHAPTER   XXI. 

The  Treaty  of  Peace.    1762-1763 415 

Illustrations  :  Jefferys'  Map  of  the  Proposed  Neutral  Territory, 
416  ;  Jefferys'  Map  of  the  Canadian  Northwest,  421  ;  Part  of 


CONTENTS  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS.  ix 

the  Map  of  the  Compagnie  Franqoise,  423 ;  Vander  Aa's 
Canada,  425  ;  Map  of  North  America,  from  the  Gentleman's 
Magazine  (December,  1755),  427  ;  Jefferys'  Map  of  Lake  Win- 
nipeg and  the  River  of  the  West,  429. 

e 

CHAPTER   XXir. 

The  Effect  upon  the  Indians.    1763-1765 432 

Illustrations  :  Map  of  Bouquet's  Campaign  in  Smith's  Histori- 
cal Account,  435  ;  Hutchins's  Survey  of  Bouquet's  Route,  436, 
437  ;  Soull's  Map  of  the  Monougahela  Valley,  439  ;  Portrait  of 
Henry  Bouquet,  443. 

CHAPTER   XXIII. 

Occupation  Completed.     1764,  1765 447 

Illustrations  :  Jefferys'  Map  of  the  Coast  of  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  (1768),  448,  449 ;  Ross's  Course  of  the  Mississippi 
(1775),  450  ;  Callot's  Town  and  Fort  of  Natchez,  451  ;  Callot's 
View  of  the  Fort  at  Natchez,  453  ;  Callot's  Map  of  Kaskaskia 
and  Fort  Chartres,  458,  459  ;  Thomas  Hutchins's  Villages  in  the 
Illinois  Country,  460  ;  Ross's  Vicinity  of  Fort  Chartres  and  Kas- 
kaskia, 461  ;  A  French  House  among  the  Illinois  (Callot),  463. 

Index 465 


EXPLORATIONS  IN  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 


CHAPTEK  I. 

THE   MISSISSIPPI    BASIN   AT    THE    END    OF    THE    SEVENTEENTH 

CENTURY. 

The  seventeenth  century  closed  with  France  prepared  to 
profit  by  the  results  and  influences  of  more  than  a  hundred  and 
sixty  years  of  exploration  in  the  interior  of  North  America. 

On  the  eastern  seaboard  of  the  continent  the  claims  of  France 
arising  from  the  voyage  of  Verrazano  had  availed  lit- 
tle, thouo-h  Louis  XIV.  had  strenuously  asserted  them.   The  rival 

"  ...  claimants. 

The  Spaniards  of  those  days  guarded  their  capricious 
rights  from  Florida  northward.  The  English,  taking  advan- 
tage of  the  close  attention  bestowed  by  France  upon  intestine 
affairs  during  her  civil  wars,  had  begun  a  settlement  on  the 
North  Carolina  coast.  This  was  almost  coincident  with  the  de- 
feat of  the  Great  Armada,  that  first  serious  setback  to  Spanish 
pride.  The  century  which  followed  saw  the  English  well  estab- 
lished along  the  Atlantic  shores  of  North  America.  In  1688, 
the  revolution  which  put  William  of  Orange  on  the  English 
throne  opened  the  way  for  a  long  conflict  with  France,  nowhere 
more  warily  pursued  than  in  the  New  World.  By  the  close  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  England  was  prepared  to  defend  her 
territorial  claims  from  Spanish  Florida  on  the  south,  with  limits 
in  dispute,  to  Acadia  on  the  north,  where  there  was  a  like  imcer- 
tainty  of  boundary.  The  English  claim  thus  covered  an  extent 
of  coast,  with  an  indefinite  extension  inland,  of  so  varied  a 
climate  that  the  average  temperature  ranged  from  42°  to  75° 
Fahrenheit. 

In  the  struggle  for  the  possession  of  the  region  about  the 


2  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  though  France  had  contested  it  with 
The  St.  England  and  with  Portugal,  she  had  practically  ob- 

ano'iiuT  tained  the  mastery,  and  now  held  without  dispute 
son's  Bay.  ^j^^^^  gTaud  uorthcm  portal  of  the  continent,  so  essen- 
tial in  pressing  her  claim  upon  the  great  interior. 

Farther  north,  about  Hudson's  Bay,  her  rivalry  with  England 
was  brisk,  —  for  it  was  necessary  there  to  protect  the  flank  of 
her  main  enterprise  on  the  St.  Lawrence,  —  and  at  the  close 
of  the  seventeenth  century  it  was  at  its  height.  It  was  a  claim 
for  and  against,  on  both  sides,  stoutly  advocated  and  as  stoutly 
defended.  Between  the  rivals  it  was  not  only  a  question  of 
trade  for  peltries,  vital  for  France  in  her  system  of  colonization, 
but  it  was  to  decide  with  whom  rested  the  coveted  chance  of 
finding  in  those  high  latitudes  the  long-sought  passage  to  the 
western  ocean.  Already  in  the  closing  years  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  leader  whom  France  had  most  trusted  in  this  north- 
ern conflict  was  gaining  skill  and  hardihood  for  a  career  which 
was  soon  to  be  transferred  to  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi. 

In  1641,  Charles  Le  Moyne,  leaving  Dieppe,  had  come  to 
Quebec  to  cast  his  lot  for  a  while  with  the  Jesuits. 

IbGrvill© 

and  Here  he  raised  up  a  family  of  distinguished  sons,  and 

the  oldest  and  youngest  bore  the  appellations  respec- 
tively of  Iberville  and  Bienville.  The  elder  was  a  man  of 
nearly  thirty  when  he  appeared  in  command  of  an  expedition 
sent  from  Quebec  to  attack  the  remaining  English  forts  on 
Hudson's  Bay.  He  failed  in  his  purpose,  and  learning  on  his 
way  back  that  the  Yankee  Phips  was  in  the  St.  Lawrence 
(1690),  he  bore  away  his  ships  to  France  with  what  plunder 
he  had  secured.  In  the  years  immediately  following,  fortune 
varied  in  the  north,  —  now  the  French,  now  the  English,  got 
the  ascendency.  In  the  winter  of  1694-95,  IberviUe  gained 
what  had  been  lost,  and  a  like  fortune  followed  him  in  a  mea- 
sure in  1697. 

Stories  told  by  the  Indians,  and  some  papers  captured  by 
him  in  Fort  Nelson,  had  inspired  him  with  the  hope  of  finding 
his  way  through  these  northern  waters  to  the  great  western  sea, 
but  in  this  he  failed,  leaving  the  problem  to  be  intermittently 
attacked  with  little  cessation  even  to  the  present  day. 
Rysw^ck.  The  peace  of  Ryswick,  negotiated  in  ignorance  of  the 
French  conquests  hereabouts,  restored  in  1697  to  the 


ENGLISH  CHARTERS.  3 

English  all  they  had  lost  about  Hudson's  Bay,  and  Iberville 
was  left  to  final  adventures  in  a  new  field. 

The  death  of  Frontenac  had  deprived  Canada  of  a  conspicu- 
ous leader,  and  active  spirits,  subject  to  the  influence  of  that 
rugged  soldier,  turned  to  other  allurements.  So  Iberville  ap- 
pears on  the  Mississippi. 

The  charters  which  the  English  king  had  given,  while  parcel- 
ing; out  the  Atlantic  seaboard  of  the  present  United 

o  -111  If!  1  English 

otates,  carried  the  bounds  ot  the  several  grants  west-  sea-to-sea 
ward  to  the  great  ocean  supposed  to  lie  somewhere 
beyond  the  Alleghanies.  Though  Drake  and  others  had  followed 
the  Pacific  noi'thward  to  Upper  California,  the  determination 
of  longitude  was  still  so  uncertain  that  different  estimates  pre- 
vailed as  to  the  width  of  the  continent.  When  the  charter  of 
Virginia  was  confirmed  in  1609,  there  was  just  dying  out  a  con- 
ception which  had  prevailed  among  geographers,  but  which  the 
intuitions  of  Mercator  had  done  much  to  dispel,  that  a  great 
western  sea  approached  the  Atlantic  somewhere  midway  along 
its  seaboard.     This  theory  had  come  down  from  the  ^^  _ 

*'  ^  ^  The  Sea  of 

voyage  of  Verrazano.  To  prove  it,  various  explora-  verrazano. 
tions  had  been  made  inland  from  the  ramifying  waters  of  the 
Chesapeake  and  the  Hudson.  It  was  with  this  determination  in 
view  that  Francis  I.  of  France  had  commissioned  Cartier  to 
pierce  the  continent  from  the  great  gulf  back  of  Newfound- 
land ;  and  Cartier's  success,  followed  by  the  later  developments 
made  by  Champlain,  Nicollet,  Grosseilliers,  and  Joliet,  had 
proved  on  the  contrary  the  extent  of  the  two  great  interior 
valleys  of  North  America,  and  that  they  stretched  over  the  lati- 
tudes and  longitudes  supposed  to  have  been  the  bed  of  the  Ver- 
razano Sea.  These  explorations  had  also  shown  how  slight  a 
ridge  separated  the  basins  of  these  continental  valleys.  St.  Lus- 
son  and  Duluth  had  gone  through  the  formalities  of 

.  ~        T?  CI  '•'''^  interior 

taking  possession  for  France  of  these  enormous  water-  vaueysand 
sheds  near  their  upper  springs,  and  La  Salle  had 
planted  the  arms  of  France  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  for 
a  similar  purpose.  Thus,  by  1665,  the  French  had  proved  the 
vast  westward  extent  of  the  St.  Lawrence  water-system,  and  had 
made  extremely  probable  the  existence  of  the  Mississippi.  The 
ultimate  discovery  of  this  latter    basin  could  not   be  avoided 


4  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

when  the  English,  in  1663,  insisted  in  the  charter  of  Carolina  on 
territorial  rights  which  reached  to  the  New  Albion  of  Drake. 
This  region  of  the  Pacific  coast  was  no  longer  generally  thought 
to  lie  just  beyond  the  Alleghanies,  as  British  disregard  of  for- 
eign intelligence,  exemplified  in  the  Farrer  map  of  1651,  had 
recently  asserted. 

The  principles  which  underlie  the  rights  of  discovery  were 
Rights  of  su^6  *^  bring  these  rival  claims  of  sovereignty  over 
discovery.  ^j^g  samc  territory  to  a  sharp  encounter,  as  soon  as 
the  French  had  proved  that  their  lines  of  exploration  crossed 
these  charter  bounds  of  the  English.  This  impending  conflict 
was  made  inevitable  by  the  passage  of  Joliet  and  Marquette 
down  the  Great  River  to  the  Arkansas,  in  1673,  and  of  La  Salle 
to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  in  1681.  It  was  the  establishment  of 
military  posts  throughout  this  vast  valley  that  eventually  brought 
on  a  life-struggle  between  the  English  and  the  French.  The 
English  pretension  was  an  alleged  territorial  right  derived  from 
charters  formulated  for  the  most  part  when  the  world  was  ig- 
norant of  the  limits  they  conveyed.  These  charter  extensions 
were  propped  by  claims  bought  from  the  Iroquois,  only  less 
substantial,  which  prompted  England  to  push  her  pioneers  to- 
ward the  setting  sun  and  athwart  the  French  course.  A  large 
part  of  the  history  of  the  Mississippi  valley  during  the  eighteenth 
century  is  the  record  of  a  conflict  of  races  which  these  opposing 
claims  engendered. 

The  prize  contended  for  was  a  noble  one.  In  Europe  the 
Alps  and  in  Asia  the  Himalayas  shake  off  as  from 
Mississippi  Central  buttresses  the  streams  of  human  life  to  a  verge 
of  ocean  waters.  A  continental  condition  that  the  Old 
World  had  not  known  was  now  found  in  this  magnificent  inte- 
rior basin,  over  which  the  frontiers  of  a  great  republic  were 
yet  to  be  rapidly  pushed  from  one  mountain  wall  to  and  beyond 
the  other.  It  is  a  territory  in  its  central  water-shed  of  more 
than  a  million  square  miles,  and  with  its  tributary  areas  of  no 
less  than  two  and  a  half  millions.  It  is,  perhaps,  as  fertile  a 
space  for  its  size  as  the  globe  shows,  and  capable  of  supporting 
two  hundred  millions  of  people.  It  has  a  breadth  of  tillable 
valley  remarkably  free  from  impassable  mountains,  and  modern 
engineering  can  easily  overcome  all  physical  obstacles  in  the 
way  of  a  united  people  holding  it. 


THE   GREAT  RIVER.  5 

It  is  threaded  by  a  central  water-way  that  begins  amid  an 
average  temperature  o£  40°,  and  meets  the  sea  with  the  mercury 
at  72°.  This  lordly  current  passes  through  belts  of  corn,  cotton, 
sugar,  and  oranges.  It  is  shaded  successively  by  the  willow 
and  the  sycamore,  by  the  locust,  persimmon,  and  ash,  and  at 
last  by  the  bay-tree,  the  magnolia,  and  palmetto.  With  forty 
or  fifty  considerable  tributaries  and  a  hundred  thousand  affluent 
streams  in  all,  the  great  current  carries  off  to  the  Gidf  a  mar- 
velous precipitation.  These  water-ways  offer  sixteen  thousand 
miles  of  navigable  waters,  and  it  has  been  said  that  its  great 
body  of  tributaries  is  more  generally  serviceable  for  trans- 
port service  than  that  of  any  other  river,  except  perhaps  the 
Amazon.  Vessels  of  good  size  are  thought  to  be  able  to  trav- 
erse at  least  ten  thousand  miles  of  channel  for  most  of  the  year. 
The  voyager  stemming  the  current  from  the  Gulf  must  pole  his 
bateau  nearly  a  thousand  miles  to  the  Ohio.  At  the  Falls  of 
St.  Anthony  —  the  first  serious  obstruction  —  he  finds  himself 
about  seven  hundred  feet  above  the  sea,  and  this  elevation  is 
more  than  doubled  when  he  reaches  the  source  of  all  in 
Itasca  Lake,  more  than  twenty-five  hundred  miles  from  the 
deltas  in  the  Gulf.  If  he  foUow  the  Missouri  from  its  junc- 
tion with  the  main  stream,  he  can  reach  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
near  four  thousand  miles  from  the  sea,  and  the  sinuosities  of 
his  course  will  double  the  length  of  his  passage. 

Descending,  as  was  ordinarily  done  in  these  early  days  of  the 
French  occupation,  from  the  portages  about  Lake  Michigan, 
the  canoeist  found  a  declination  of  nearly  six  hundred  feet  in 
twenty-five  hundred  miles.  In  the  floods  of  the  early  summer 
it  took  him  about  a  month  to  make  the  descent,  and  hardly 
less  than  three  months  at  any  time  to  mount  against  the  stream. 
A  season  of  freshets  would  have  raised  the  surface  of  the  Gulf 
a  foot  and  a  quarter  but  for  some  oceanic  compensations. 

Moreover,  there  was  something  commensurately  grand  in 
the  surging  of  this  vast  current  through  the  years  The  surging 
athwart  an  average  width  of  forty  or  fifty  miles  of  ^"''■^°*- 
alluvial  bottom,  on  its  way  to  find  the  level  of  the  sea.  Fran- 
quelin,  in  1684,  gave  the  Taensas  lake  as  immediately  opening 
into  the  Great  River.  Iberville,  in  1700,  found  it  a  league  to 
the  west,  and  Thomassy,  in  1859,  put  it  several  miles  still 
farther  from  the  main  stream.     Again,  Cahokia  was  founded 


6  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

in  1699,  but  it  was  not  long  before  the  shifting  current  left  its 
habitations  far  inland.  Charlevoix,  in  1721,  speaking  of  the 
region  about  the  mouth  of  the  Red  River,  found  evident  proof 
that  "the  Mississippi  casts  itself  here  from  the  east,"  —  a  con- 
dition to  be  considered,  he  thought,  in  making  settlements 
thereabouts.  To  counteract  these  and  other  hycb-ographical 
vagaries  along  the  great  current  and  its  largest  affluent,  the 
government  of  the  United  States  is  now  expending  five  million 
dollars  a  year. 

For  over  a  century  after  the  European  contact  this  great 
ji,g  river  had  waited  for  recognition.     It  sometimes  rose 

discoverers.    g£|.y  £gg^  ^^  '^g  j^g^j^  g^j^j  yg^  ^jj-g  inimcuse  outflow  in 

the  Gulf  had  failed  of  adequate  notice.  Pineda,  in  1579,  did 
not  comprehend  it.  Twenty  years  later,  De  Soto  had  crossed 
the  river  at  the  Chickasaw  bluffs  without  a  suspicion  of  an 
immense  drainage,  of  which  the  consequent  cartography  took 
no  note. 

It  was  not  tiU  1673  that  Marquette  and  Joliet  found  the 
"great  water"  of  the  Indian  report,  so  long  familiar,  to  flow 
neither  into  the  Gulf  of  California  nor  into  the  Sea  of  Virginia, 
but  to  run  south  to  the  wide  semi-tropical  Gulf.  The  future  of 
the  Great  River  was  now  assured.  The  luckless  La  Salle  had 
fallen  by  the  assassin's  bullet  while  endeavoring  to  make  it  the 
imposing  southern  entrance  to  the  interior  of  the  continent. 

Nature  had,  indeed,  made  the  entrance  from  the  Gulf  more 
than  the  portal  of  a  single  basin.  The  south  winds 
of  the  which  are  swept  in  from  its  tropical  waters,  uniting 

with  other  currents  drawn  thither  from  the  regions 
bordering  on  the  Pacific,  course  northward  together  to  be  pre- 
cipitated at  the  sources  of  the  Mississippi,  Saskatchewan,  and 
Mackenzie  rivers.  Thence  passing  up  those  boreal  valleys, 
reinforced  by  the  Chinooks  from  the  North  Pacific,  they  make 
the  soil  fairly  tillable  almost  to  the  Arctic  circle,  and  agricul- 
ture profitable  as  far  north  as  the  62°  of  latitude.  There  is 
another  natural  cause  of  the  cultivable  power  of  these  high 
latitudes  in  the  depression  of  the  average  altitude  of  the  land, 
as  shown  in  the  eight  thousand  feet  of  elevation  where  the 
Union  Pacific  Railroad  runs,  and  the  four  thousand  on  the  line 

Note.  The  opposite  map  is  from  the  Carte  de  la  Louisiane,  par  le  Sieur  D'Anville,  dressee  en 
mat,  1732;  publiee  en  1752.  It  shows  the  country  of  the  Natchez  and  Tonicas,  and  the  position 
at  that  time  of  the  Lac  des  Tainsas. 


tortcU  hv  Twnte  Coupee 


l^i^  <;«7;rDn^''^»— >>^-ciwr  en,  mantan. 


8  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

of  the  Canadian  Pacific.  It  has  been  computed  that  the  de- 
pression of  altitude  from  Wyoming  to  the  Mackenzie  River 
woidd  counteract  climatically  a  northing  of  thirteen  degrees. 
Furthermore,  the  greater  lengih  of  sunlight  everywhere  charac- 
teristic of  high  latitudes  conduces  at  least  to  the  rapidity  of 
botanic  development. 

All  these  causes  put  spring  on  the  Peace  River  ahead  of  that 
season  on  the  Minnesota,  and  the  ice  in  the  river  at  Fort  Snell- 
ing  near  St.  Paul  is  said  to  break  up  simultaneously  with  that 
at  Fort  Vermilion  in  Athabasca.  Thus  it  was  in  these  early 
days  that  the  buffalo  ranged  among  the  copsewood  and  on  the 
prairie  extending  from  the  lower  Mississippi  to  Athabasca. 

So  the  great  longitudinal  trough  of  North  America,  with 
scarce  a  perceptible  divide  in  some  places  where  the  Mississippi 
and  Red  River  of  the  North  head  together,  stretches  in  gradu- 
ated aspects  from  the  Mexican  Gulf  nearly  to  the  Great  Slave 
Lake.  In  this  way  the  enormous  interior  trough  is  not  confined 
to  the  Mississippi,  but  is  increased  by  something  like  two  mil- 
lions of  square  miles  of  land  along  the  Mackenzie,  Saskatche- 
wan, and  Red  rivers,  which  with  the  Mississippi  form  an  ahnost 
continuous  course  of  fertilizing  water. 

It  was  obviously  now  the  mission  of  France  to  make  this 
watery  portal  by  the  Mexican  Gulf  for  the  valley  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi what  French  exjilorers  had  already,  a  century  and  a 
half  before,  made  the  St.  Lawrence  Gulf  for  the  lower  basin  of 
the  Great  Lakes. 

The  French  had  two  rivals  to  be  feared  in  fulfilling  this  mis- 
Rivais  of  sion,  —  the  Spanish  and  the  English. 
Spanish  I^d  The  Spaniards  had  not  profited  as  they  might  have 
English.  done  by  the  incursions  across  this  lower  country  made 
by  Narvaez  and  De  Soto ;  but  they  had  founded  St.  Augustine, 
on  the  Atlantic  coast,  in  1565,  twenty  years  and  more  before 
the  fatal  stroke  to  Spanish  prosperity  fell  in  the  destruction  of 
the  Great  Armada.  Spain  was  at  that  time  unquestionably 
dominant  everywhere  in  this  northern  continent,  and  she  had 
not  yet  begun  to  fear  that  the  English  would  in  time  dispossess 
her  of  the  New  Mexican  mines,  or  that  the  French  in  the  Illi- 
nois would  get  from  the  Comanches  horses  bred  from  Spanish 
ponies.     She  had  little  to  dread  from  Raleigh's  colony  at  Roa- 


[From  Humphreys  and  Abbot's  PaHn  of  the  Mississippi,  etc.,  War  Department,  1861      It  shows 
the  Mille  Lacs  region,  the  upper  MissiBsippi  basin,  and  the  sources  of  the  Red  River  of  the  North.] 


10  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

noke,  or  from  the  scattered  fishing  stations  of  the  French  about 
Newfoundland.  But  when  Philip  II.  died,  the  time  had  come 
for  Spain's  threatening  rivals  to  contest  her  claim  to  American 
soil. 

France  on  her  part  was  not  prepared  to  dispute  the  rights  of 
Spain  west  of  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte,  for  the  Span- 
iards asserted  that  Antoine  du  Miroir,  who  had  led 
their  explorations  from  Mexico,  had  never  passed  east  of  that 
river.  Accordingly,  from  that  stream  along  the  coast  of  the 
modern  Texas  and  as  far  east  as  Pensacola  (where  Spain  had 
recently  settled  a  colony,  in  1696)  France  claimed  that  her 
rights  rested  upon  her  discovery  of  the  Mississippi  by  Joliet, 
and  upon  La  Salle's  coursing  along  the  adjacent  coasts. 

Inland,  however,  the  Spaniards  had  already  gained  some 
knowledge  of  this  Texan  region.  In  1575,  Francisco  de  Urdi- 
nola  had  reconnoitred  the  upj)er  reaches  of  its  rivers,  and  a 
hundred  years  later  (1675)  an  expedition  under  Fernando  del 
Bisque  had  again  penetrated  the  country.  There  seem,  indeed, 
to  have  been  wandering  Spanish  missionaries  at  certain  points 
in  the  country  at  a  later  day.  What  is  now  San  Antonio  had 
formerly  been  a  Spanish  military  post,  and  was  considered  a 
regidar  station  of  their  frontier  in  1690,  and  a  number  of  set- 
tlers had  been  gathered  there  under  its  protection. 

The  ciu'rent  of  the  Red  River  offered  to  the  Spaniards  another 
approach  on  the  western  flank  of  the  Mississippi ;  but 

Red  River.       .,,,11  ,  .  ,      ^  . 

it  would  lead  them  to  a  low  country,  without  mines, 
and  this  characteristic  of  the  lower  valley  of  the  Mississippi 
had  long  kept  that  gold-seeking  people  out,  and  was  likely  to 
continue  to  do  so. 

The  most  dangerous  rivals  of  the  French  were  in  the  east,  — 
English  *^6  English  dwelling  north  of  the  Floridean  peninsula, 
colonies.  separated  by  bounds  claimed  in  1663  by  the  English 
to  be  the  31°  of  north  latitude,  but  never  settled  till  the  oblit- 
eration of  1763.  Living  under  their  sea^to-sea  charters,  these 
English  were  nevertheless  walled  in  on  the  Atlantic  slope  by 
the  Appalachian  range.  Though  in  some  regions  much  con- 
glomerated of  stock,  they  were  in  the  main  dominated  by  immis- 
takable  English  principles  which  the  French  little  understood. 
This  difference  of  character  always  kept  the  two  people  mutu- 
ally unattractive.     There  was  a  fundament  of  English  policy 


THE  ENGLISH   COLONIES.  11 

which  at  first  blush  seemed  to  place  the  English  on  a  better 
footing'  with  the  aborigines,  but  events  hardly  showed  a  con- 
stant advantage  in  it.  This  was  the  policy  of  claiming  only 
sovereignty  over  the  natives'  land,  and  requiring  the  purchase 
of  the  fee  before  occupancy.  The  French  and  the  Spaniards, 
on  the  other  hand,  claimed  both  sovereignty  over  and  the  fee  in 
all  heathen  lands  wliich  they  occupied. 

The  English,  moreover,  were  a  trading  people  in  a  sense  that 
the  French  were  not.  They  founded  their  communities  on 
family  life,  which  bound  them  to  the  soil,  so  that  they  abided 
whereon  they  entered.  The  practice  of  the  fur  trade,  the  sole 
support  of  the  French,  was  opposed  to  such  kind  of  domesticity. 
The  English,  too,  had  proved  themselves  a  seafaring  folk  beyond 
what  their  rivals  on  the  St.  Lawrence  were.  They  had  flour- 
ished on  the  ocean  in  spite  of  a  survival  of  meditevalism  in  the 
narrow  policy  of  imperial  navigation  acts.  By  this  failure  of 
the  mother  English  to  recognize  a  public  policy  advancing 
inevitably,  the  colonies  were  hardened  to  ways  which  eventually 
deprived  England  of  them. 

The  Dutch,  during  their  rule  on  Manhattan,  had  organized 
an  Indian  trade  in  peltries,  and  the  English,  who  succeeded  in 
their  pursuit  of  the  same  trade,  outbid  the  French  in  their  own 
policy.  Their  rivals  in  this  were  touched  in  their  sorest  spot. 
From  the  beginning  this  emulation  engendered  and  kept  up 
a  sort  of  guerrilla  warfare  between  the  traders  of  both  races. 
In  1685  Governor  Dongan  of  New  York  had  invited  the  "  Otta- 
wa was,  a  people  on  the  back  of  Maryland,  Virginia,  and  Caro- 
lina, to  come  and  trade  at  Albany,"  and  the  next  year  the  French 
captured  some  Albany  traders  who  had  gone  to  these  Indians 
"  on  a  lake." 

The  British  colonists  were  drawing  apart  from  the  feudal  and 
manorial  systems  of  the  Old  World,  as  the  French  were 

Their 

not.  In  New  England,  the  early  adoption  of  the  Mo-  political 
saic  code  had  banished  primogeniture  and  entail.  The 
Quakers  in  Philadelphia  had  already  sounded  the  knell  of  slav- 
ery, and  Samuel  Sewall,  in  Boston,  was  soon  to  inveigh  against 
it  in  his  Selling  of  Joseph.  The  future  union  of  the  States 
was  noticeably  prefigured  in  the  plans  of  confederation  which 
William  Penn,  Lord  Culi3epper,  and  others  were  considering. 
The  people  were  everywhere  divided  into  "  patriots  "  and  "  pre- 
rogative men." 


12  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

The  class  lists  of  Harvard,  soon  to  be  followed  by  those  of 
Yale,  ranked  students  by  social  position,  so  that  a  strong  infu- 
sion of  Old- World  sentiments  in  family  distinctions  was  still 
prevailing,  but  on  political  questions  it  was  easily  remarked 
that  growing  convictions  were  sundering  the  colonies  from  the 
mother  country.  It  was  significant  of  the  geographical  diver- 
gencies of  these  sentiments,  that  in  the  sequel  the  southern 
gentleman  was  oftenest  to  stand  for  a  new  future,  and  the 
northern  to  be  conservative. 

To  the  people  of  pure  English  stock  other  hardy  races  had 
been  added.    Cromwell,  through  his  navy  under  Blake, 

other  races.    ..  -,.  „  rnco- 

had  prepared  the  way  tor  the  downiall  ot  opain ;  but 
he  exercised  quite  another  influence  on  the  destiny  of  America 
when  he  sent  over  the  Scotch  prisoners  captured  at  Dunbar 
and  Worcester.  It  was  the  thrift  and  premonitions  of  these 
exiles  which  had  established  at  Boston  the  oldest  of  American 
mutual-aid  associations,  vigorous  and  rich  to-day.  The  Scotch- 
Irish  which  followed  later  to  Pennsylvania,  Marjdand,  and  Vir- 
ginia, were  to  make  the  most  enduring  of  pioneers,  and  to  stamp 
their  virile  nature  upon  the  early  history  of  Tennessee  and 
Kentucky.  This  spirit  was  in  due  time  to  permeate  the  Great 
Valley.  A  body  of  Germans,  sent  over  by  a  society  in  Frank- 
fort-on-the-Main,  had  already  settled  in  Pennsylvania  and  on 
the  tide-waters  of  the  Chesapeake,  —  redemptioners,  for  the 
most  part,  —  who  were  in  fit  time  to  move  along  the  valley  of 
Virginia  and  play  their  part  in  the  great  western  march.  It 
was  unfortunate  for  New  York  that  she  did  much  by  her 
large  manorial  grants  to  repel  the  Germans,  who  might  have 
pushed  her  settlements  westward  much  faster  than  was  done. 
Those  who  came  to  seek  an  independent  life  in  the  New  World 
did  not  take  kindly  to  anything  like  tenant  servility,  and  sel- 
dom tarried  in  a  province  that  denied  them  the  best  results  of 
emigration. 

Such  were  the  peoples  kept  back  for  a  while  from  the  water- 
The  shed   of   the    Mississippi  by  a  mountain    barrier  of 

Appalachians,  peculiar  impenetrability  for  one  of  its  climate  and 
height.  "  The  woods  of  the  Appalachian  district,"  says  Professor 
Shaler,  a  distinguished  student  of  our  American  physiography, 
"  were  in  all  respects  the  finest  of  those  found  in  any  region  be- 
yond the  tropical  parts  of  the  earth."     With  an  undergrowth  of 


TENTATIVE  GEOGRAPHY.  13 

brushwood  and  vines  they  long  retarded  the  English  progress 
to  the  west,  and  such  was  their  density  that  ten  to  twenty  years 
followed  the  deforesting  before  the  land  became  wholly  arable. 

Cartier,  in  1535,  when  he  was  laying  open  the  great  St. 
Lawrence  route  into  the  heart  of  the  continent,  saw  the  ex- 
treme northern  end  of  this  mountain  wall  in  the  higlilands 
of  Maine.  Four  years  later  (1539),  De  Soto  found  that  its 
southern  end  turned  westward  in  upper  Georgia.  Mercator, 
in  1569,  using  the  reports  of  these  two  explorers,  and 
observing  from  the  stories  of  those  who  had  been 
along  the  coast  that  none  of  the  streams  entering  the  Atlan- 
tic between  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  and  Florida  flowed  in 
very  large  volume,  was  the  first  to  divine  the  true  nature  of  the 
Appalachians  as  a  coast  range,  and  he  so  delineated  it  on  his 
great  mappemonde.  That  intuitive  geographer  erred,  however, 
in  turning  this  coast  range  at  its  southern  end  to  the  west, 
so  as  to  make  it  serve  the  same  purpose  in  shortening  the  riv- 
ers which  flowed  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  He  was  led  to  this 
mistake  by  the  little  importance  which  Spanish  explorers  had 
so  far  put  upon  the  Mississippi.  To  the  geographical  sense 
there  was  yet  no  suspicion  that  this  still  obscure  river  had  a 
volume  equal  to  the  water-shed  of  the  larger  part  of  the  conti- 
nent. To  Mercator's  mind  this  great  inland  region — for  he 
had  discarded  the  Verrazano  theory  —  was  all  one  with  the 
basin  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  character  of  the  Great  Lakes 
was  not  yet  comprehended,  and  Champlain  had  not  begun 
their  development.  So  it  seemed  natural  to  Mercator  to  place 
the  springs  of  the  St.  Lawrence  in  Arizona  and  make  the  cen- 
tral depression  of  the  continent  run  nearly  east  and  west, 
rather  than  north  and  south. 

It  is  curious  that  so  late  as  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury what  was  true  in  Mercator  was  neglected,  and  what  was 
false  was  adopted.  The  maps  of  Hennepin,  the  Frenclunan, 
and  of  Edward  Wells,  the  Englishman,  fail  to  delineate  any 
coast  range  along  the  Atlantic  side,  but  from  upper  Georgia 
they  extend  a  mountain  range  due  west,  making  only  a  break 
in  it  for  the  Mississippi. 

In  the  seventeenth  century,  the  intercourse  of  the  Iroquois 
with  the  French  and  English  had  taught  these  rivals  what  a 
commanding  position  those  native  confederates  held  to  domi- 


14  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

nate  the  passage  to  regions  beyond  them.  At  the  very  close  of 
that  century,  Bellomont,  governing  New  York  and  New 
andthe?"*"^  England  for  the  English,  had  suggested  the  barring 
country.  ^^^^  ^£  ^j^^  French  from  the  Iroquois  country  by  the 
occupation  of  Oswego.  Already  hamlets  were  appearing  along 
the  Mohawk,  and  the  Palatines  of  that  German  stock  which 
was  to  push  up  the  valley  of  Virginia  were  leading  the  way. 
The  French  had  got  a  strong  hold  upon  the  Iroquois  as  early 
as  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  At  its  close,  Robert 
Livingston  was  warning  the  English  that  their  alliance  with 
the  Iroquois  would  be  imperiled  if  they  did  not  send  their 
own  missionaries  among  them.  The  New  York  Assembly  tried 
to  checkmate  the  Jesuits  by  making  it  death  for  a  papist  to 
enter  their  borders.  The  French  acted  more  adroitly,  and  on 
September  8,  1700,  deputies  of  the  Iroquois  signed,  at  Mon- 
treal, the  earliest  written  treaty  —  not  a  mere  deed  of  land  — 
between  Europeans  and  the  aborigines.  Under  its  terms  Jesuit 
missionaries  were  once  more  dispatched  to  the  region  south  of 
Ontario  and  within  what  New  York  claimed  as  a  part  of  her 
jurisdiction. 

All  these  years  had  shown  both  to  the  French  and  to  the 
English  that  there  was  little  difficulty  in  running  trails  for 
trade  or  war  from  the  valley  of  the  Mohawk  and  Genesee  to 
the  springs  of  the  Alleghany  River,  and  leading  the  way  to  the 
Ohio  and  the  Mississippi. 

The  basin  of  the  Ohio,  with  which  there  was  thus  easy  con- 
The  Ohio  *^^*  ^*  ^*^  northeastern  limit,  was  the  same  inviting 
basin.  country  which  after  the  American  Revolution  drew 

away,  under  Putnam  and  Parsons,  from  the  Atlantic  States  so 
large  a  proportion  of  their  best  blood.  It  was  an  area  of  more 
than  two  hundred  thousand  square  miles,  through  which  the 
vitalizing  river,  gathering  its  affluents  along  a  course  of  more 
than  a  thousand  miles,  sped  on  its  way  with  an  almost  even 
flow.  Only  at  the  modern  Louisville  was  there  a  fall  of  some- 
thing like  twelve  to  fifteen  feet  in  the  mile.  The  ripple  on 
its  banks  had  a  far  from  constant  level.  It  has  been  known 
to  sink  to  a  depth  of  a  very  few  feet  in  its  channel  and  to  rise 
to  fourscore  and  more.  Evans,  on  his  maps,  puts  the  ordinary 
freshet  rise  at  twenty  feet,  and  says  that  the  stream  scarcely 
ever  overflows  its  upright  banks.     Modern  gauges  have  shown 


IROQUOIS   CONQUESTS.  15 

that  for  about  a  huudrecl  and  sixty  days  in  the  year  boats  draw- 
ing six  feet  of  water  can  find  a  free  passage.  In  his  day,  Evans 
reckoned  that  during  full  water  boats  could  be  rowed  from 
Pittsburgh  to  the  sea  in  sixteen  or  seventeen  days ;  and  that 
from  Mingo-town,  seventy-five  miles  from  the  Forks,  an  ordi- 
nary stage  of  the  flood  would  carry  a  draught  of  four  feet.  The 
river  sweeps  on  amid  a  variegated  flora,  and  the  oak  and  hick- 
ory, the  maple  and  black  walnut,  sheltered  in  these  older  days 
vast  herds  of  buffalo. 

It  was  along  this  valley  that  the  Iroquois  in  the  seventeenth 
century  had  pushed  their  westward  conquests.  On  iroquoja 
their  route  they  had  scattered  the  Eries  dwelling  conquests. 
south  of  the  lake  of  that  name.  La  Salle  had  heard  of  the 
Ohio  through  some  Senecas  who  visited  Montreal  in  1669,  and 
in  following  its  current  some  years  later,  he  had  found  that  the 
name  of  the  Iroquois  could  create  alarm  even  as.  far  as  the 
Mississippi. 

At  the  close  of  that  century  these  confederated  tribes  were  at 
the  height  of  their  power,  —  a  domination  that  had  taken  more 
than  a  century  and  a  half  in  the  making.  Their  influence 
extended  on  the  east  into  New  England.  They  were  feared  at 
the  north  in  the  upper  parts  of  Canada.  They  were  a  terror 
on  the  Mississippi,  and  they  enforced  a  savage  law  as  far  south 
as  the  Potomac.  They  had  nearly  scoured  away  all  human  life 
between  the  Ohio  and  Lake  Erie,  so  that  a  territory  marked  as 
a  vantage-ground  for  man's  endeavor  —  with  its  moderate  ele- 
vation separating  the  streams  that  were  ultimately  delivered 
into  the  gulfs  of  St.  Lawrence  and  Mexico  —  was  simply  a 
hunting-ground  for  their  young  men,  or  was  continuously  trav- 
ersed by  marauding  bands  of  Shawnees.  By  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  foes  of  the  Iroquois  were  gaining 
courage.  It  is  a  traditon  gathered  by  Loskiel  that  the  Dela- 
wares,  fleeing  before  the  whites,  now  crossed  the  Alle-  The  owo 
ghanies,  drove  the  Cherokees  before  them,  and  pushed  *"^®^" 
into  the  Ohio  valley.  In  1693,  the  governor  of  New  York  had 
endeavored  in  vain  to  entice  the  Miamis,  bordering  on  the  west- 
ern end  of  Lake  Erie,  to  break  their  bonds  with  the  French. 
Three  years  later,  by  English  instigation,  the  Iroquois  advanced 
against  these  Miamis,  with  the  Senecas  in  the  van.  The  con- 
federates now  received  their  first  check.     They  were  defeated 


16  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

the  next  year  (1697)  and  driven  back,  and  ultimately  (1702) 
forced  to  a  peace. 

At  the  opening*  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Senecas  main- 
Senecasand  t^-i^ed  the  Westernmost  outposts  of  the  Iroquois  in 
Mingoes.  nortlieastcrn  Ohio.  Their  congeners  the  Mingoes  — 
as  the  English  called  them  from  a  Delaware  usage  —  were  in 
the  southeastern  parts.  Later  the  Shawnees  came  back  to  their 
old  haimts,  and  some  of  them  settled  farther  west  on  the  Scioto, 
leaving  their  friends  the  Minnisinks  on  the  forks  of  the  Dela- 
ware. 

It  has  been  suggested  by  Parkman  and  others  that  the  Shaw- 
nees were  remnants  of  the  devastated  Eries;  but  the 
evidence  is  not  conclusive.  Their  villages  extended 
south  of  the  Ohio  into  Kentucky,  perhaps  as  far  as  the  Savan- 
nah River,  since  Delisle  placed  them  there  in  1720.  The  most 
populous  of  their  towns  appear  to  have  been  situated  on  the 
Shawanee  (Cumberland)  and  the  Cherokee  (Tennessee)  rivers, 
whence  in  time  the  Cherokees  and  Chickasaws  were  to  push 
them  back. 

The  vagrancy  of  the  Shawnees  —  Chaouanons,  as  the 
French  termed  them  —  renders  their  history  the  most  perplex- 
ing of  all  tribes  of  the  Great  Valley.  We  find  traces  of  them 
as  far  south  as  the  Gulf  shore,  and  as  far  east  as  Pennsylvania 
and  perhaps  Virginia.  Mr.  C.  C.  Royce,  of  the  Ethnological 
Bureau  at  Washington,  has  tried  to  trace  their  wanderings. 
He  is  inclined  to  the  Erie  theory  of  their  origin,  and  thinks 
them  not  unlikely  the  "  Massawomekes,"  of  whom  Captain 
John  Smith,  in  1608,  heard  as  living  over  the  mountains  "  upon 
a  great  salt  water,  which  by  all  likelihood  is  some  great  lake,  or 
some  inlet  of  some  sea  that  fitteth  into  the  South  Sea."  They 
were  thought  to  make  their  approach  to  the  tide-water  tribes, 
their  enemies,  by  streams  entering  Chesapeake  Bay  from  the 
northwest. 

When  Marquette  was  at  his  mission  on  Lake  Superior  in  1670, 
he  encountered  the  Shawnees  there,  and  he  knew  f x^om  the  glass 
beads  which  they  wore  that  they  had  traded  with  the  English, 
then  only  possible  by  packmen  who  had  passed  the  Alleghanies. 
Again  we  find  Marquette,  while  on  his  eventful  voyage  down 
the  Mississippi  three  years  later,  speaking  of  the  Ohio,  when 
he  passed  its  mouth,  as  coming  from  the  country  of  the  Shaw- 


THE  ALLEGHANY  PASSES.  17 

nees.  At  the  very  close  of  the  century,  Father  Cosme  tells  us 
that  the  Shawnees  were  still  bartering  with  the  people  east  of 
the  Alleghanies. 

Beyond  the  Scioto  lay,  as  the  century  went  on,  the  Wyan- 
dots,  —  a  fragment  of  the  old  Huron  people,  —  and  neighboring 
to  them  were  the  Ottawas  on  the  Sandusky  and  the  Maumee  of 
the  north. 

As  to  this  eastern  affluent  of  the  Mississippi,  the  French  had 
introduced  a  confused  nomenclature,  which  needs  to  ohio  and 
be  borne  in  mind  in  reading  the  early  narratives,  ^^^ash. 
What  they  often  called  the  Ouabache  (Wabash)  was  the  jsres- 
ent  stream  of  that  name,  continued  in  the  modern  Ohio  below 
their  junction.  The  Belle  Riviere,  or  the  Ohio,  was  the  larger 
stream  above  the  Wabash,  and  the  name  was  extended  to  cover 
what  we  now  call  the  Alleghany.  James  Logan  of  Pennsyl- 
vania early  (1718)  discriminated :  "  Some  call  both  these 
rivers  [Ohio  and  AYabash]  by  the  same  name,  and  generally 
Wabache ;  but  they  ought  to  be  distinguished,  because  the 
head  of  Ohio  comes  much  more  easterly  [in  the  Alleghany], 
extending  even  to  the  government  of  New  York." 

The  French  and  the  Dutch  had  knowledge  of  this  Alleghany 
ingress  into  the  Ohio  regions  as  early  as  the  middle 

The  AUe- 

of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  the  English  came  giiany  River 
later  to  know  it.  Champlain  had  been  the  first  to  in-  iroquois 
vade  the  Iroquois  country,  the  natural  gateway  to  the 
west.  His  maps  are  the  earliest  we  have.  The  Jesuit  mis- 
sionaries added  further  information,  and  the  warring  inroads  of 
Tracy  and  Denonville  still  increased  it.  But  the  almost  steady 
adherence  of  the  Iroquois  to  the  English  gave  these  rivals  of 
the  French  an  advantage,  increased  much  in  the  eighteenth 
century  by  the  remarkable  personal  influence  of  William  John- 
son, when  the  final  struggle  came  for  the  possession  of  the 
valley. 

As  the  English  settlements  moved  back  from  the  sea,  all 
along  the  Appalachians,  it  became  apparent,  from  time  to  time, 
that  there  were  gaps  in  the  mountains  which  could  be  passed, 
and  water-ways  beyond  to  be  found  which  led  to  the  Ohio  val- 
ley.    The  Pennsylvanians  opened  such  a  passage  by  the  west 


18  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

branch  of  the  Susquehanna.  Evans  later  describes  it  as  "  in- 
Pennsyiva-  terlockcd  with  brauches  of  the  Alleghany,  making  a 
theAUe'ha-  portagc  of  forty  miles,  and  from  thence  to  Shamokin 
'*'^^-  [at  the  forks  of  the  Susquehanna]   the  traders  are 

usually  seven  days  coming  down  with  a  fresh."  One  of  the 
legends  on  Evans's  map  of  1744  speaks  of  the  Susquehanna  as 
having  no  "sea  navigation"  because  of  its  obstructions,  but, 
it  adds,  "  by  its  length  and  large  branches,  communicating  with 
the  country  beyond  the  mountains,  it  makes  amends  in  con- 
veniences for  Indian  navigation  with  canoes."  Of  the  "  End- 
less Mountains  "  (Appalachians)  it  further  says  that  "  back  of 
Pennsylvania  there  are  a  hundred  miles  right  across,  scarce  an 
acre  of  ten  of  which  is  capable  of  culture." 

There  was  also  from  Pennsylvania  another  portage  from  the 
Juniata  to  other  affluents  of  the  Alleghany,  a  route  which 
knew  much  devastation  in  the  later  wars.  The  Virginians 
Ga  s  in  vir-  f ouud  still  shortcr  portagcs  to  the  Monongahela  and 
giuia.  Ohio    from   the  upper   waters    of  the    Potomac,  and 

observers  were  not  slow  in  discovering  that  the  climate  on  the 
two  slopes  of  the  mountains  was  not  much  changed  by  the 
elevation  which  was  to  be  passed. 

The  passage  west  in  upper  Georgia  by  an  almost  level  route 
around  the  mountains  had  long  been  known.  The  information 
which  De  Soto  had  acquired  was  confirmed  by  the  Spanish 
miners,  who  worked  here  at  intervals  for  a  long  time  after 
1560.  The  Carolina  traders,  however,  did  not  depend  alone  on 
The  caroiin-  ^^^^  morc  practicable  route  in  maintaining  their  Indian 
theirTndian  traffic.  The  Carolinian  s  were  a  conglomerate  people 
trade.  from  thc  beginning.    Beside  the  pure  English,  there 

were  strains  of  other  blood,  —  Scotch  and  Protestant  Irish, 
Swiss,  Palatines,  and  Dutch,  the  last  coming  down  from  the  Iro- 
quois country  after  the  English  occupation.  The  cultivation  of 
rice  was  even  yet  looked  upon  among  them  as  a  staple,  and 
created  with  the  increase  of  its  crops  a  scattering  plantation 
life,  so  that  towns  were  not  the  ride. 

Trade  had  already  begun  with  the  Cherokees,  a  race  in  the 
south  mvich  like  the  Iroquois  in  the  north.     Indeed,  Horatio 

Note.  The  opposite  map  is  from  Humphreys  and  Abbot's  Basins  of  the  Mississippi,  etc.,  War 
Department,  1861.  It  shows  the  Ohio  basin,  and  liow  the  rivers  on  the  southern  side  of  the  Ohio 
are  separated  by  the  AUeghanies  from  the  Virginia  and  Carolina  waters. 


^A^ 


20  THI^  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

Hale  and  other  philologists  have  seen  in  the  Cherokee  tongue 
certain  lino-uistie  relations  to  the  lansuao^e  of  the  Iro- 

Cherokees.  o       o 

quois,  though  there  are  some  investigators  who  con- 
nect them  rather  with  the  Dacotahs.  The  Cherokees  were  a 
skillful  people,  made  pipes  deftly,  and  constructed  mounds  of 
earth.  They  were  much  more  inclined  to  agriculture  than  the 
tribes  which  the  French  had  known  in  Canada,  and  their  sus- 
tenance depended  rather  on  vegetables  and  fruits  than  upon  ani- 
mal fats  and  oils  used  in  the  north.  Their  villages  stretched 
all  alone:  the  mountains  southward,  from  the  headwaters  of  the 
Holston  and  Clinch  in  Tennessee  to  the  sources  of  the  rivers 
in  Carolina,  and  they  built  their  lodges  on  either  slope  of  the 
Appalachians  and  in  their  valleys.  De  Soto  had  found  them  in 
much  the  same  situation. 

It  is  very  likely  that  in  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century  the  Virginians  had  some  knowledge  of  their  northern 
villages.  In  1690,  one  Daugherty,  a  Virginian  trader,  had 
gone  among  them.  In  1693,  a  deputation  of  their  chief  men 
had  come  to  Charleston  to  ask  aid  against  the  Tuscaroras. 

In  May,  1699,  Bienville,  the  French  commander  on  the 
GuK,  reports  an  attack  of  Indians  on  the  north  shore  of  Lake 
Pontchartrain,  and  among  the  assailants  were  some  whites ;  and 
he  supposes  they  were  English  from  Carolina.  Even  as  early 
as  La  Salle's  time,  it  seemed  evident  to  that  explorer  that  the 
Enalish  in  Carolina  were  sendino-  traders  over  the  momitains, 
for  he  could  not  otherwise  account  for  the  articles  of  European 
make  which  he  found  among  the  Mississippi  tribes. 

The  inter-tribal  traffic  which  was  carried  on  by  the  Yamas- 

sees  on  the  Savannah,  by  the  Catawbas  on  the  river 
Indians  and    of  that  name,  and  by  the   Tuscaroras  on  the  Neuse, 

with  the  Indians  over  the  mountains  naturally  opened 
traders'  trails  for  the  English.  Delisle,  in  his  map  of  1701, 
shows  the  routes  of  the  Carolina  traders  to  the  Chickasaws  ;  in 
that  of  1703  he  makes  a  river,  evidently  the  Tennessee,  a  thor- 
oughfare for  such  trade,  and  in  1707  he  calls  it  the  "  Tinnase," 
making  it  rise  among  the  Cherokee  villages. 

The  Creeks,  more  easily  reached  around  the  southern  spurs 

of   the   mountains,  occupied   the  territory  south  and 

west  of  the  Savannah  River  and  thence  to  the  Mobile, 
and  they  included  in  their  tribal  associations  the  Seminoles  of 


THE   OCEAN  ROUTE.  21 

Florida.  The  line  between  the  Cherokees  and  the  Creeks  fol- 
lowed the  Broad  River,  and  ran  roughly  along  the  34°  of  north 
latitude.  The  English  were  already  beginning  to  establish 
their  factories  among  this  people,  and  a  legend  on  Mitchell's 
map  (1755)  says  that  such  stations  are  scattered  through  the 
country,  except  among  the  Alibamons  on  the  Alabama  River, 
who  had  come  under  French  influence  in  1715,  though  the 
English  had  been  among  them  as  early  as  1687.  The  "  route 
of  Colonel  Welch  in  1G98,"  given  in  the  same  map  as  that  fol- 
lowed by  the  Carolina  traders,  crossed  westward  the  upper 
waters  of  the  Appalachicola,  past  the  Alabama  and  Chickasaw 
rivers  (the  main  forks  of  the  Mobile),  and  so  reached  the  coun- 
try of  the  Chickasaws. 

When  La  Salle  turned  trader,  he  was  confined  in  his  en- 
terprise, by  royal  edict,  to  those  parts  of  the  upper  ^^  ^^-^^  ^^j 
Mississippi  valley  which  did  not  supply  furs  to  the  ^'^''•'^'i^^- 
Montreal  market.  Finding  the  peltries  of  this  region  heavy, 
—  for  they  were  largely  buffalo-skins,  —  he  had  been  prompted, 
after  his  discovery  of  the  outlet  of  the  Gi'cat  River  at  the  south, 
to  organize  a  plan  of  shipping  his  furs  down  the  Mississippi  on 
their  way  to  Europe,  rather  than  to  trail  them  over  the  north- 
ern portages  on  the  way  to  the  merchants'  ships  at  Montreal. 
Apprehensive  of  English  interruption,  he  had  at  the  same  time 
urged  that  the  eastern  tributaries  of  the  Mississippi  should  be 
occupied,  to  close  them  against  any  such  rivalry.  It  was  left 
for  Iberville  to  open  this  ocean  route  to  France. 

Even  after  La  Salle  had  reached  the  Illinois  and  had  begun 
to  covet  their  trade,  the  Montreal  merchants  had  been  j^^  g^ng  ^^^ 
jealous  of  the  interference  which  it  would  cause  with  ^°"*y- 
the  commerce  of  the  northern  Indians.  Royal  decrees  had  rec- 
ognized the  diverting  of  this  trade  of  the  Illinois  Indians  to  its 
natural  channel  down  the  Mississippi ;  but  when  La  Salle's  pa- 
tent fell  to  his  faithful  henchman,  the  picturesque  Tonty  with 
the  silver  hand,  an  exception  was  made  in  the  latter's  favor 
because  of  his  signal  services,  and  he  was  allowed  (1699)  to 
dispatch  two  canoes  and  twelve  men  yearly  from  the  St.  Law- 
rence to  his  Rock  on  the  Illinois.  This  indulgence  did  not 
long  continue,  and  in  1702  it  was  withdrawn.  Tonty,  as  we 
shall  see,  was  thus  driven  to  join  Iberville  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi. 


22  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

The  obstacles  of  these  Canadian  routes  to  the  sea  were  great, 
involving  the  passage  of  divides,  which  were  scattered 
northern  from  the  extreme  end  of  Lake  Superior  to  the  Niag- 
ara River.  To  the  common  apprehension  of  the  aver- 
age European  geographer,  these  multiplied  connections  were 
simply  evolved  in  the  conception  of  a  river  by  which  the  Mis- 
sissippi was  united  with  the  St.  Lawrence.  This  is  seen  in  the 
l7itrodicctio  in  Universam  Geoffrajpliiam.  of  Cluverius,  and  in 
an  edition  published  so  late  as  1729.  Even  Bowen,  the  Eng- 
lish geographer,  so  late  as  1747,  makes  the  Wisconsin  River  an 
unbroken  link  connecting  Lake  Michigan  and  the  Mississippi. 

The  earliest  known  of  these  portages  were  those  farthest 
away  from  the  Canadian  settlements,  and  principal  among  them 
was  that  starting  from  the  country  about  Green  Bay,  where  the 
Winnebagoes,  an  isolated  tribe  of  the  Dacotah  stock, 
first  introduced  these  Iroquois  of  the  west  to  the 
early  explorers.  This  carry  was  known  from  Indian  report  to 
Nicollet  as  early  as  1634,  but  Joliet  was  probably  the  first  to 
pass  it,  in  1673.  It  was  a  somewhat  tedious,  but  not  a  difficult 
portage,  and  it  is  said  that  even  to-day,  in  wet  seasons,  the 
waters  of  the  approaching  streams  sometimes  mingle.  Passing 
up  the  Fox  River  from  the  Bay,  the  canoeist  traversed  Lake 
Winnebago,  along  the  sites  of  the  now  populous  towns  of  Fond 
du  Lac  and  Oshkosh.  Twisting  along  the  upper  Fox  for  sixty 
or  seventy  miles,  at  what  is  now  Portage  City,  he  passed  not 
much  over  a  mile  by  land  to  the  Wisconsin  with  its  umbra- 
geous banks  and  shifting  sands. 

The  course  of  the  trader  thus  threaded  the  country  of  the 
Foxes,  a  people  who   were  never  brought  wholly  to 

The  Foxes.  '  j.        i  ^  o  j 

succumb  to  French  blandishments,  and  often  rendered 
this  route  dangerous  and  even  impassable.  They  were  a  tribe 
who,  in  alliances  with  the  Dacotahs  on  the  one  side  and  the 
Chickasaws  and  Iroquois  on  the  other,  did  much  to  resist  the 
westward  movements  of  the  French. 

Driven  from  this  route  by  Green  Bay,  the  French  trader  some- 
Lake  times  resorted  to  another  carry,  at  the  extreme  west- 

Superior.  gj.^  gjj^j  q£  Lake  Superior,  where  he  entered  the  St. 
Louis  River,  and  found  himself  in  that  Mille  Lacs  region,  the 
arena  of  many  a  conflict  of  the  Chippeways  and  Dacotahs.  The 
variegated  forests  of  this  passage  are  still  mirrored  in  its  innu- 


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24  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

merable  lakes,  ponds,  and  streams,  clear  and  pebbly,  and  the 
wild  rice  rustles  as  the  paddle  bends  its  tottering  stalks.  It  was 
through  such  a  country  that  the  woodsman  sought  the  upper- 
most reaches  of  the  MississijDpi,  where  that  river  was  first 
seen  by  Europeans,  and  whence  Duluth,  in  1680,  had  hojjed  to 
find  a  way  to  the  Gulf  of  California.  Where  the  pioneer  two 
centuries  ago  stranded  his  canoe,  the  twin  cities  of  an  ocean 
lake  now  rival  Chicago  as  a  distributing  centre  of  produce  and 
trade. 

Before  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  portages  at 
^  ,  the  head  of  Lake  Michigan  had  become  the  best  known 

Lake  c       -,  . 

Michigan       of  all,  and  there  had  been  a  tradino-post  for  something; 

portages.  ti         r»  c  r^    •  • 

like  fifteen  years  at  the  Chicago  River.  What  Her- 
man Moll,  the  English  cartographer,  called  the  "  land  carriage 
of  Chekakou  "  is  described  by  James  Logan,  in  a  communica- 
tion which  he  made  in  1718  to  the  English  Board  of  Trade,  as 
running  from  the  lake  three  leagues  up  the  river,  then  a  half  a 
league  of  carriage,  then  a  mile  of  water,  next  a  small  carry, 
then  two  miles  to  the  Illinois,  and  then  one  hundred  and  thirty 
leagues  to  the  Mississippi.  But  descriptions  varied  with  the 
seasons.  It  was  usually  called  a  carriage  of  from  four  to  nine 
miles,  according  to  the  stage  of  the  water.  In  dry  seasons  it 
was  even  farther,  while  in  wet  times  it  might  not  be  more  than  a 
mile  ;  and,  indeed,  when  the  intervening  lands  were  "  drowned," 
it  was  quite  possible  to  pass  in  a  canoe  amid  the  sedges  from 
Lake  Michigan  to  the  Des  Plaines,  and  so  to  the  Illinois  and 
the  Mississippi. 

It  is  along  this  route  that  the  drainage  canal  of  the  city  of 
Chicago  is  now  constructing  for  the  joint  purpose  of  relieving 
the  city  of  its  sewage  and  opening  a  passage  for  its  commerce 
with  the  interior. 

There  were  other  portages  south  of  the  Chicago  River,  and  at 
the  southwest  corner  of  the  lake  by  the  lesser  and  greater  Cal- 
umet rivers,  by  which  the  Kankakee  and  Des  Plaines  branches 
of  the  Illinois  were  sometimes  reached.  It  is  not  always  easy, 
in  the  early  narratives,  to  determine  which  of  these  portages 
about  Chicago  was  in  particular  instances  used,  and  in  the  maps 
there  is  some  confusion  in  the  Chekagoua  and  Calumet  rivers. 

In  the  southeast  angle  of  the  lake  was  the  portage  of  the  St. 
Joseph  River,  which  La  Salle  was  much  accustomed  to  trav- 


26  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

erse.  There  was  by  it  about  four  miles  of  carriage  to  the 
Kankakee.  The  northward  current  of  the  eastern  shore  of 
Lake  Michigan,  and  the  southward  current  of  the  western  shore, 
naturally  made  the  St.  Joseph  portage  a  return  route  to  Canada, 
and  the  Chicago  an  outward  one.  At  a  later  day,  this  same 
river  was  found  to  afford  a  carriage  to  an  upper  branch  of  the 
Wabash,  and  it  became  the  principal  channel  of  supplies  for 
the  settlers  at  Vincennes.  One  can  well  imagine  how  this  broad 
prairie  land  struck  the  Canadian  from  his  sterile  north,  —  the 
flower-studded  grass  of  the  spring  and  the  tall  waving  banner- 
ets of  the  later  season,  with  the  luxury  of  the  river  bottoms 
and  their  timber  margins. 

There  was  still  a  series  of  portages  crowning  the  narrow  strip 
Lake  Erie  ®^  *^^®  soutlicrn  watcr-shcd  of  Lake  Erie,  but  they  were 
portages.  little  uscd  till  the  eighteenth  century.  There  is  some 
reason  to  suppose,  from  the  evidence  of  Sanson's  map,  that  the 
Maumee  had  been  explored  as  early  as  1656,  and  the  portage 
thence  to  the  Wabash  had  been  known  to  Allouez  as  early  as 
1680.  A  year  or  two  later,  La  Salle  says  it  is  the  most  direct 
of  all  the  routes  to  the  Illinois,  but  too  hazardous  because  of 
the  prowling  Iroquois.  It  remained  almost  unfrequented  be- 
cause of  these  confederates  till  after  the  settling  of  Detroit  in 
1715.  By  this  time  the  Miarais'  confederacy  had  possessed  the 
region  about  the  affluents  of  the  Wabash,  and  the  three  thou- 
sand warriors  which  they  could  put  in  the  field  were  a  check 
upon  the  Iroquois.  The  country  was  an  attractive  one,  with  its 
undidating  landscape  of  meadow  and  upland,  and  streams  that 
alternately  lingered  in  calm  repose  and  twirled  with  the  foam- 
ing rapid.  Animal  life  was  brisk  with  the  deer,  the  wolf,  and 
the  bear.  The  rivulets  were  alive  with  the  white  swan,  the 
crane,  and  the  heron,  springing  from  the  wild  rice  or  settling 
along  the  grassy  isles.  On  the  gentle  slopes  of  the  land  one 
heard  the  turkey  and  the  quail.  It  was  a  meeting-groimd  of 
the  savages,  and  the  ashes  of  their  council  fires  were  seen  on 
the  knolls. 

This  portage  varied  with  the  state  of  the  water  from  eight  or 
nine  miles  to  even  thirty.  For  two  hundred  miles  downward 
from  the  carry  the  Wabash  was  more  or  less  interrupted,  but 

Note.  The  opposite  map  is  from  Humphreys  and  Abbot's  Basins  of  the  3Iississippi,  etc.,  War 
Department,  1861.  It  shows  the  line  of  the  divide  intersecting  the  portages  between  the  Great 
Lakes  and  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  basins. 


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30  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

beyond  that  there  was  about  four  hundred  miles  of  navigable 
course  for  boats  not  drawing  over  three  feet. 

Another  portage  from  the  Maumee  to  the  west  branch  of  the 
Big  Miami  became  later  the  traveled  route  of  the  traders  from 
Pennsylvania  and  Virginia.  A  short  carry  from  Sandusky  to 
the  Scioto  became  the  warpath  of  the  French  Indians  about 
the  Detroit  River  against  the  Choctaws  and  flat-headed  tribes 
towards  Carolina. 

The  portages  farther  east  came  into  use  much  later.  A  short 
one  by  way  of  the  Cuyahoga  (where  Cleveland  now  stands)  led 
to  the  upper  waters  of  the  Muskingum.  That  by  Presqu'  Isle 
(the  modern  city  of  Erie)  and  French  Creek  led  to  the  Alle- 
ghany River,  and  became  eventually  the  chief  approach  of  the 
French  after  they  had  determined  to  maintain  military  posts 
along  the  Ohio  and  bar  out  the  English.  It  is  by  the  same 
route  to-day  that  commerce  and  engineering  skill  are  combining 
in  hope  to  connect  Pittsburgh,  the  great  centre  of  coal  produc- 
tion, with  the  Lakes,  already  coursed  with  steamers  of  more 
than  four  thousand  tons  disjolacement. 

Still  more  easterly  was  that  to  Chautauqua  Lake,  the  source 
of  the  Alleghany,  but  it  proved^too  rolicb  of  an  incline  for 
transporting  heavy  supplies.  It  was  also  quite  possible  to  pass 
Lake  Onta-  fi'om  the  sourccs  of  the  Genesee  to  the  springs  of  the 
no  portages.  Alleghany,  but  the  route  was  hardly  used  except  by 
wanderers  and  stealthy  war  parties.  The  portages  from  the 
Iroquois  country  to  the  south  were  mainly  of  use  in  passing  to 
the  Susquehanna  and  Delaware. 

There  is  a  story  reported  by  Begon  in  a  memoir  (1716)  that 
The  Sea  of  ^^  early  as  1688  the  Assiniboine  Indians  had  offered 
the  West.  ^.Q  conduct  a  French  traveler,  De  Noyen,  by  what 
seems  to  have  been  the  Minnesota  River,  over  a  divide  to  the 
Red  River  of  the  North,  and  so  to  Lake  Winnipeg.  Thence,  the 
memoir  claimed,  the  way  was  open  to  the  great  Sea  of  the  West, 
where  people  rode  on  horseback.  The  journey  to  and  from 
would  occupy,  he  said,  five  months.  These  are  the  earliest  inti- 
mations of  an  overland  discovery  of  the  Pacific,  by  a  definite 

Note.  The  map  on  the  preceding  pages  shows  the  northern  portages  as  understood  at  the  time 
of  Joliet's  discoveries.  From  Marcel's  Reproductions,  following  a  map  in  the  Archives  of  the 
Marine  at  Paris. 


V^'  ""•^^; 


[From  Humphreys  and  Abbot's  Basins  of  the  Mississippi,  etc.,  War  Department,  1861.    It  shows 
the  divide  between  the  Yellowstone  River  and  Snake  River.] 


32  THE   MISSISSIPPI  BASIN. 

course,  and  the  first  indication  of  the  passage  which  was  to 
connect  the  Great  Valley  with  the  Mackenzie  basin  and  the 
polar  sea. 

In  1695,  Le  Sueur  established  a  post  on  the  upper  Missis- 
sippi, and  acted  as  a  pacificator  of  the  Chippeways  and  Sioux. 
In  his  search  at  the  same  time  for  a  copper  mine  on  the  Green 
River,  —  which  was  reached  by  the  Minnesota,  —  he 

La  Sueur,  ,,,.  ,,  it 

andst.  Pe-     had,  it  IS   supposcd,    been   the    earliest  to  know   this 

ter  River.  «,,,.... 

amuent  or    the  Mississippi,  when  he  bestowed  upon 
it  the  name  of  St.  Peter. 

When,  in  1673,  Marquette  descended  the  Wisconsin  and  the 
The  Mis-  Mississippi,  and  was  going  along  with  the  current  in 
souriBiver,  dear  Water  at  a  speed  of  twelve  miles  an  hour,  he 
noticed  a  great  change  in  the  body  of  the  stream,  which  was 
produced  by  the  much  more  rapid  influx  from  the  west  of  a 
great  volume  of  eddying  sediment.  He  learned  from  the  Indi- 
ans that  this  polluting  stream  was  called  the  Pekitanoiii.  At  a 
later  day,  when  the  tribe  of  the  Missouris  was  found  to  be  a 
leading  race  among  the  fourteen  nations  of  savages  which  inhab- 
ited the  banks  of  this  great  river,  it  was  easy  for  it  to  become 
better  known  as  the  Missouri,  thus  distinguishing  it  as  an  afflu- 
ent of  the  Mississippi,  when  the  volume  of  its  current  entitled 
it,  rather  than  the  Mississippi,  to  be  called  the  principal  stream. 
At  this  time  Marquette  indulged  the  hope  that  one  day  he 
might  be  permitted  to  ascend  its  turbid  course  and  solve  the 
great  problem  of  the  west.  It  was  reserved,  however,  for  the 
eighteenth  century  to  begin  the  solution  of  that  geographical 
riddle  which  was  made  clear  in  the  nineteenth.  It  was  then 
found  that  the  springs  of  the  Platte,  which  fed  the  Missouri, 
and  its  port-  wcrc  adjaccut  to  those  of  the  Colorado,  which  de- 
*8e8-  bouched  into  the  Gulf  of  California.     Other  explor- 

ers discovered  that  the  sources  of  the  Yellowstone  opened 
portages  to  those  of  the  Snake,  while  an  upper  affluent  of  the 
Missouri  was  contiguous  to  the  headwaters  of  Clark's  Fork. 
The  Snake  and  this  fork  were  ultimately  found  to  pass  their 
united  waters  into  the  Columbia,  entered  from  the  Pacific  for 
the  first  time  by  a  Boston  ship  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  draining  a  country  richer  and  larger  than  the 
combined  area  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard  commonwealths  from 
Maine  to  Virginia. 


CHAPTER  II. 
Iberville's  expedition. 

1697-1700. 

The  treaty  of  Ryswick,  in  April,  1697,  left  France  m  posses- 
sion of  the  two  great  valleys  of  North  America.  Tonty  was  now 
at  his  Rock  on  the  Illinois,  a  sort  of  privileged  charac-  ^   ^ 

.  .  .  Tonty. 

ter  in  the  valley,  respected  by  Indian  and  white  when- 
ever they  came  within  his  influence.  Whoever  has  followed 
the  career  of  La  Salle  needs  not  to  be  told  of  the  services  of 
this  faithful  follower.  It  was  well  known  how  valorously  and 
devotedly  he  had  gone  down  the  Mississippi,  hoping  to  res- 
cue his  bewildered  leader,  A  journal  which  Tonty  had  kept, 
falling  into  irresponsible  hands,  had  only  just  been  published 
in  Paris,  but  there  was  so  much  of  interjected  error  and  foolish 
untruth  in  it  that  the  hardy  adventurer  promptly  disowned  it. 
The  publication,  however,  had  served  to  increase  his  fame  in 
France.  Before  this  he  had  asked  that  he  might  be  permitted 
to  follow  up  the  discoveries  of  La  Salle  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Great  River  and  confirm  its  possession  to  the  king,  but  the 
man  of  action  was  not  yet  thought  to  be  needed. 

In  October,  1697,  Louvigny  preferred  the  same  request,  and 
held  out  the  hope  of    invading  Mexico  successfully, 

^.      ...  .  I.     ,  .  Louisiana. 

from  the  Mississippi  as  a  base,  —  a  view  of  the  river  s 
usefulness  that  was  not  lost  a  few  years  later.  In  December, 
De  Remonville  argued  in  a  Memob'e  that  the  development  of 
Louisiana  was  of  great  importance  to  France.  He  catalogued 
the  variety  of  products  which  the  country  could  be  made  to  yield, 
—  game,  peltry,  wine,  silk,  and  hemp.  The  territory,  he  said, 
was  rich  in  mines.  Its  oaks  could  more  than  supply  the  royal 
navy  with  masts.  He  pointed  out  that  a  colonizing  expedition 
ought  to  be  sent  speedily,  lest  the  English  should  gain  posses- 
sion in  advance.     Moreover,  he  added,  a  considerable  military 


Amewove 

SEPTENTR 
rONALE 


THE  MISSISSIPPI. 
[From  a  map  in  the  Bibliothgque  Nationale,  given  in  Marcel's  Reproductions.     It  was  made 
by  the  Abb6  Gentil  and  given  to  that  library  in  1713.     It  shows  the  early  explorations  of  La 
SaUe,  and  represents  the  knowledge  previous  to  Iberville's  voyage.] 


IBERVILLE. 


35 


force  was  necessary  to  protect  the  expedition  from  the  English 
buccaneers,  who  infested  the  coast  from  New  York  to  Florida. 
He  adduced  a  rumor  that  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania  had 
already  dispatched  fifty  men  to  settle  on  the  Wabash  (Ohio), 


^"^M-i 

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THE  GULF 

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r^^^C^      / 

and   such  an  occupation  could  be  but  a  distinct  threat  to  the 
French  control  of  the  Mississippi. 

This  memoir  was  addressed  to  Pontchar train,  who  as  minis- 
ter had    already  been  importuned  by    Iberville,  just 
now  released  from  service  in  the  north  by  the  treaty  train  and 

•^  *'     Iberville. 

of  Ryswick.      The  urgency  was  great,  and  the   des- 


36  IBERVILLE'S  EXPEDITION. 

tined  actor  was  restless.  The  government  yielded,  and  Iber- 
ville gathered  for  the  undertaking  a  company  of  two  hundred 
emigrants,  men,  women,  and  children.  It  is  from  Penicault,  a 
carpenter  in  the  company,  who  kept  a  running  account 
of  events  up  to  his  leaving  the  colony  in  1721,  that 
we  get  a  great  deal  of  what  we  know  of  these  early  beginnings 
of  Louisiana. 

In  June,  1698,  Iberville  obtained  command  of  the  "  Badine," 
while  another  ship,  the  "  Marin,"  was  placed  under  the  Cheva- 
lier de  Surgeres.  Fresh  reports  now  came  from  over  the  Eng- 
lish Channel,  indicating  that  their  rivals  were  planning  to  send 
out  a  company  of  French  Protestants,  While  the  government's 
purpose  was  to  seize  the  mouths  of  the  Mississippi  before  the 
English  could  get  there,  Iberville  thought  it  prudent  to  give 
out  that  his  destination  was  the  Amazon.  It  was  October  be- 
fterviiie  ^^^^  ^^  ^^^  ready  to  sail,  and  on  the  24th  his  two 
sails.  ships,  with  some  tenders,  put  to  sea  from  Brest.     Six 

weeks  later,  on  December  4,  the  leading  ships  reached  Cap 
Fran9ois  in  San  Domingo,  and  the  supjDly  vessels  came  safely 
in  one  by  one.  His  company  refreshed  themselves,  but  not 
always  prudently,  and  a  number  died  from  over-indulgence. 
Here  the  "  Fran9ois,"  having  orders  which  had  been  sent  ahead, 
joined  the  expedition.  She  was  a  ship  of  fifty  guns,  under 
Chateaumorand,  and  became  a  faithful  escort. 

Iberville,  who  had  picked  up  some  filibusters  as  recruits,  left 
San  Domingo  on  New  Year's  Day  (January  1,  1699),  under 
the  piloting  of  a  wild  adventurer,  Laurent  de  Graff.  The 
fleet  passed  beyond  Cuba  and  then  steered  north.  Land  was 
made  in  the  early  evening  of  January  23.  It  was  a  coast  of 
white  sand,  and  the  smoke  of  fires  was  seen  far  inland.  Turn- 
ing west  and  anchoring  each  night,  three  days  later  the  French 
saw  the  masts  of  vessels  behind  a  protecting  sand-spit,  and  pres- 
ently a  sloop  came  out  to  reconnoitre.  Iberville  was  now  off 
Pensacola.  He  avoided  intercourse  with  the  inquisitive  Span- 
iards, and  crawled  away,  still  westerly,  along  the  coast.  On 
January  31,  he  was  opposite  Mobile  Bay,  but  the  weatlier  was 
foul  and  he  did  not  stop.  Ten  days  later  his  ships  glided  under 
the  lee  of  an  island,  which  was  later  known  as  Ship  Island. 

Iberville  soon  started  (February  27)  in  a  boat  towards  the 
mainland,  where  he  cautiously   tried  to   open    communication 


THE   GREAT  RIVER   FOUND. 


37 


with  the  natives.  He  hoped  to  get  guides  from  them  to  aid 
him  in  finding  the  Great  liiver.  Some  wandering  Bayagoulas, 
whom  he  encountered  among  the  Biloxi  Indians,  told  him  of  a 
great  river  farther  west  upon  which  their  tribe  lived. 


IBERVILLE.     [From  Margry.] 

There  was  fortunately  among  the  French  the  priest,  Anas- 
tase  Douay,  who  had  been  a  companion  of  La  Salle.  Moreover, 
Iberville  himself  vas  well  informed  of  what  La  SaUe,  Merabr(:i, 
Tonty,  and  even  Henne]Mn  had  said  of  the  Mississippi,  and 
counted  on  their  descriptions  as  aids  in  identifying  the  stream. 

Following  the  shore  south  and  west,  it  was  on  Mai'ch  2  that 


38  IBERVILLE'S  EXPEDITION. 

Iberville  entered  a  large  river,  and   struggled  up    against  its 
turbid  flood.     His   range  of  vision  was  bounded  bv 

The  .  ^  -^ 

Mississippi     canebrakes  and  willows.     As  lie  went  on,  lie  be^an 

found.  .       .  ,  .  '  » 

to  doubt  if  it  was  the  river  which  Hennepin,  Joutel, 
and  Tonty  had  known.  Wherever  he  encamped  he  marked  a 
tree  with  the  cross.  The  youthful  Bienville,  a  younger  brother 
of  Iberville,  usually  pushed  his  boat  ahead  of  the  rest.  They 
saw  fires  in  the  distance,  and  occasionally  got  a  sight  of  the 
neighboring  bayous.  Whatever  Indians  were  seen  possessed 
canoes  fleet  enough  to  escape,  but  one  day  a  savage  was  cajoled 
into  coming  to  them  to  receive  gifts.  This  enticed  others,  with 
whom  the  French  traded  trinkets  for  meat.  Whenever  they 
fired  a  cannon,  the  amazed  natives  fell  as  if  struck. 

The  French  reached  the  spot  where  New  Orleans  was  later 
Site  of  New  built,  and  here  discovered  the  portage  which  led  to 
Orleans.  jmier  watcrs,  by  which  they  could  reach  their  ships. 
Leaving  the  examination  of  this  for  another  occasion,  they 
passed  on  and  landed  among  the  Bayagoulas,  who  lifted  the 
peacefid  calumet  as  the  strangers  approached.  W^itli  this  tribe 
they  feasted,  and  presents  were  distributed.  Its  chief  wore  a 
serge  cloak,  which  he  said  had  been  given  to  him  by  Tonty. 
This  was  the  first  incident  which  went  far  to  convince  them 
that  they  were  at  last  stemming  the  current  of  the  Mississippi, 
They  got  some  fowl  from  the  Indians,  and  were  told  that  the 
original  stock  came  from  the  shores  of  the  western  ocean.  To 
increase  their  confidence  in  their  identification  of  the  river,  they 
turned  to  the  text  of  Hennepin,  but  failing  to  find  all  that  this 
priest  said  of  the  river,  they  grew  more  and  more  satisfied  that 
the  Eecollect  was  the  liar  which  Europe  was  inclined  to  believe 
him. 

Some  of  the  narratives  of  those  who  had  been  before  them 
on  the  river  mentioned  the  villages  of  the  Hounias, 
and  they  actually  came  to  one  of  these.  They  found 
a  palisaded  camp.  Iberville  says  that  it  had  a  sort  of  tem- 
ple, built  of  upright  logs,  and  smoothed  with  mud  in  the 
chinks.  A  conical  roof  made  of  canes  was  covered  with  painted 
figures.  They  counted  about  two  hundred  cabins  around  the 
temple,  and  saw  a  glass  bottle  which  Tonty  had  left  there. 
The  French  again  raised  a  cross  on  the  river-bank,  and  hung 
up  the  royal  arms. 


The  Hon- 
mas. 


40  IBERVILLE'S  EXPEDITION. 

Some  of  the  Houmas  went  along  with  the  French  as  guides. 
They  told  Iberville  that  the  Ascantia,  a  stream  on  the  right, 
could  be  followed  to  the  sea.  At  one  place  on  the  shore  was  a 
red-tree  trunk,  ornamented  with  the  heads  of  fish  and  bear, 
indicating,  it  was  said,  the  bounds  between  the  Houmas  and  the 
Tonicas.  Our  modern  Baton  Kouge  marks  the  spot.  They  were 
put  to  great  labor  in  turning  the  bends  against  the  current,  and 
where  they  could  they  struck  across  the  bayous.  Their  Baya- 
goula  chieftain  acted  as  an  intercessor  when  they  came  to  a 
new  village,  to  which  they  usually  announced  their  approach  by 
the  discharge  of  a  gun.  In  some  of  these  native  hamlets  they 
were  entertained  by  chanting  choirs  and  dancing-girls ;  in  all 
they  were  feasted.  In  their  turn  the  French  distributed  pres- 
ents. Sometimes  gifts  of  corn  and  meat  were  made  on  the 
part  of  the  tribes.  They  heard  of  a  people  called  the  Quini- 
pissas,  and  Tonty  was  known  to  have  been  among  such  a  tribe. 

A  Taensas  Indian  spoke  of  a  large  affluent  on  the  left, 

which  proved  to  be  the  Red  River.  The  journal  of 
Membre  gave  the  order  of  the  tribes  to  be  encountered,  but  they 
found  it  difficult  to  make  their  observations  agree  with  it.  .  Pres- 
ently they  learned  that  an  Indian  chief,  who  dwelt  somewhere 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Great  River,  possessed  a  letter,  intrusted 
to  him  by  Tonty  a  good  many  years  before,  with  injimctions 
to  give  it  to  a  Frenchman  who  was  expected  to  enter  the 
river.  It  was  in  fact  the  letter,  dated  April  20,  1686,  which 
Tonty's  Touty,  tumiug  back  from  the  Gulf  after  his  failure  to 
letter.  ^^^^^  |^-g  Qhifii,  but  liopiug  that  La  Salle  might  yet  ap- 

pear, had  left  with  the  natives.  If  this  letter  could  be  found, 
or  its  existence  proved,  there  would  be  scarcely  a  doubt  that 
the  Mississippi  was  discovered. 

Membre's  journal  seemed  to  indicate  that  he  and  Tonty  had 
descended  one  of  two  channels  where  the  river  divided.  They 
could  find  no  such  parting  of  the  stream,  and  the  Indians  said 
there  was  no  other  descending  river  than  the  one  they  were 
following.  With  this  doubt  puzzling  them,  the  boats  were 
turned  with  the  current,  and  they  were  soon  gliding  on  in  a 
way  that  made  their  progress  a  recreation.     When  they  reached 

what  in  prehistoric  times  was  very  likely  the  main 
tia  or  iber-    channel  of  the  river,  but  was  now  a  diverging  outlet, 

already  indicated    to  them  on  their  way  up  as  the 


[From  Humphreys  and  Abbot's  Basins  of  the  Mississippi,  etc.,  War  Department,  1861.  It 
shows  the  lower  Mississippi  and  the  Gulf  coast.  The  water-shed  of  the  rivers  flowing  into  the 
Gulf  east  of  the  Mississippi  is  bounded  by  a  dotted  line.] 


42  IBERVILLE'S  EXPEDITION. 

Ascantia,  Iberville  parted  with  his  brother,  and  passed  through 
this  passage  to  Lake  Pontchartrain,  with  four  men  in  two 
canoes,  seeking  a  new  route  to  his  ships. 

Bienville,  with  the  other  boats,  followed  the  course  by  which 
they  had  ascended,  and  as  he  approached  the  deltas  began  to 
make  inquiry  for  the  letter  of  Tonty.  The  promise  of  a 
hatchet  brought  forward  its  possessor,  and  after  fourteen  years 
the  paper  fell  into  a  Frenchman's  hands.  There  was  now  no 
reasonable  doubt  that  the  Mississippi  had  been  found  at  last. 

This  exploration  had  occupied  six  weeks,  and  Bienville  was 
only  a  few  hours  behind  his  brother  in  reaching  the  ships. 
They  reported  the  welcome  discovery  of  Tonty's  letter,  and 
that  about  twenty-five  leagues  up  from  the  Gulf,  Sauvole,  one 
of  the  party,  had  found  a  spot  on  the  eastern  bank,  high  enough 
to  be  above  the  overflow,  —  an  observation  that  eventually 
decided  upon  the  place  as  the  site  of  New  Orleans. 

It  was  now  necessary  to  find  some  convenient  shore  to  seat 
the  colony  before  the  ships  went  back  to  France.  One  of 
them,  Chateaumorand's  frigate,  had  already  sailed  in  February. 
Iberville  began  search  for  a  site  along  the  shores  of  what  is 
now  called  Mississippi  Sound  ;  but  it  offered  few  allurements, 
and  the  place  he  selected  was  but  a  sand-heap  on  the  northern 
side  of  the  sound.  It  was  a  peninsula  at  the  entrance  of  a  bay, 
and  its  prevailing  aridness  could  have  had  no  attractions  for 
an  agricultural  colony,  which  unfortunately  Iberville's  was  not. 
So  here  in  an  imgenerous  spot  rose  the  nine-foot  pali- 

Fort  Maure-  i  p    -r-i  t»  t  i    •  i     i 

pas  at  sades  ot  Jbort   Maurepas,  and  it  was  soon  surrounded 

by  the  temporary  huts  of  the  little  colony.  The  settle- 
ment, garrison  included,  numbered  ninety  soids,  and  took  a 
name,  Biloxi,  from  the  neighboring  tribe.  The  shallow  waters 
of  the  sound  prevented  the  near  approach  of  the  ships,  and 
it  proved  a  weary  task  to  ferry  the  guns,  forges,  and  the  heavy 
stores  a  long  distance  from  the  vessels  to  the  shore.  There 
were  a  few  patches  of  poor  soil  where  they  could  plant  beans 
and  grain ;  but  their  thoughts  were  much  more  upon  the  mines 
to  the  westward,  of  which  some  Spanish  deserters  had  already 
told  them. 

When  the  fort  and  habitations  approached  completion,  Iber- 
ville and  Surgeres  prepared  to  depart.  It  was  arranged  that 
Sauvole  should  be  left  in  command.     Bienville  was  to  be  his 


BILOXI.  43 

deputy.     This  arcleut  fellow,  though  but  eighteen  years  of  age, 
had  ah-eady  shown  the  courage  which  was  yet  to  face  years  of 
trial  in  Louisiana.     The  chief  and  his  associates  left  the  fort 
on  May  2,  1699,  and  proceeding  to  Ship  Island,  on  the  jj^^^^jy^.^ 
next  day,   sailed  thence.      During  the  voyage,  Iber-  return  and 
ville  worked  on  a  report  of  his  operations,  to  be  pre- 
sented  to  Pontchartrain,  and  dated  it  at  Rochefort  after  his 
arrival  July  3.     He  took  occasion  in  it  to  berate  "  the  Recol- 
lect [Hennepin]  whose  lying  story  had  deceived  every  one.  Our 
sufferings  and  lack  of  success,"  he  adds,  "  were  owing  to  the 
time  we  spent  in  fruitless  search  for  things  which  had  no  exist- 
ence but  in  his  imagination." 

Meanwhile,  life  at  Biloxi  was  far  from  pleasant.  The  heat 
and  blinding  reflection  from  the  sand  were  intolerable.  The 
worms  were  ruining  their  boats.  The  water  was  nauseating. 
Famine  looked  at  them  in  a  ghastly  way,  and  vessels  sent  to 
San  Domingo  for  supplies  were  still  absent.  With  gloomy 
prospects  before  them,  they  were  startled  on  July  1  Canadians 
to  see  some  strange  canoes.  They  brought  nearly  a  ^"""^  """""• 
score  of  other  mouths  to  consume  their  fast  decreasing  supplies. 
The  visitors  were  some  Canadians  who  had  accompanied  two 
priests,  Montigny  and  Davion.  These  fathers,  with  a  third, 
St.  Cosme,  had  entered  the  Illinois  country  from  the  Lakes  the 
preceding  year,  and  had  come  down  the  Mississippi  under  the 
escort  of  Tonty.  St.  Cosme  tells  us  how  helpful  this  faithful 
friend,  "  loved  by  all  the  bushrangers,"  had  been  to  them.  He 
adds  that  to  have  Tonty  with  them  was  a  sure  way  to  escape 
insults  from  the  Indians.  It  shows  how  the  Iroquois  were 
terrorizing  the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan  at  this  time,  when  the 
missionary  says  that  his  party  made  a  long  detour  to  avoid 
them,  while  they  were  also  obliged  to  take  the  Chicago  portage, 
because  the  Foxes  were  rendering  that  by  Green  Bay  unsafe. 

Tonty  had  parted  with  his  friends  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Arkansas  River,  and  returned  to  his  Rock,  in  the  previous  De- 
cember, Since  then  the  priests  had  been  on  the  lower  Missis- 
sippi, ministering  to  the  Taensas  and  Tonicas,  and  from  them 
had  heard  of  Iberville's  arrival  in  the  river.  There  was  now 
for  the  much-tried  colony  a  hope  that  the  news  of  their  coming 
would  yet  reach  Tonty  and  the  French  of  the  upper  valley. 


44 


IBERVILLE'S  EXPEDITION. 


Their  intercourse  with  the  natives  at  Biloxi  was  now  getting 
Dangerous  upon  Something  like  a  friendly  footing ;  but  there  was 
neighbors.  ^  source  of  uueasiuess  when  they  learned  that  in  a 
recent  attack  by  the  Chickasaws  upon  their  savage  neighbors 
these  dreaded  warriors  had  been  led  by  white  men.     It  showed 


COXE'S  MAP, 


them  that  the  English,  probably  from  Carolina,  were  scouring 
the  country  to  the  north.  Other  signs  of  dangerous  rivals  soon 
followed.  Bienville  had  found  it  not  a  long  march  to  the  east 
to  reconnoitre  the  Spaniards  at  Pensacola.  Later  in  August, 
he  started  west  across  Lake  Pontchartrain  to  the  Mississippi. 


THE  ENGLISH  IN  THE  RIVER. 


45 


Leaving  the  Ascantia,  he  turned  down  the  stream,  and  on  Sep- 
tember 15  met  an  English  ship  of  twelve  or  fifteen   Bienviiie 
guns.    It  was  at  a  bend  of  the  river  known  to  this  day  onu.e"^"'^ 
as  the  English  Turn.    Bienville  boarded  the  stranger,  Mississippi. 
and  found  the  commander  —  Barr  or  Bank,  for  the  statements 


PUBLISHED  1722. 


are  confused  —  one  whom  Bienville  had  encountered  in  Hud- 
Bay.     The  Eno'lishman  said  he    was  searching  for  the 


son  s 


Mississippi.  It  does  not  seem  to  be  satisfactorily  shown  that 
the  usual  story  is  true,  in  which  Bienville  is  represented  as 
deceiving  the  visitor  by  telling  him  that  the  Mississippi  was 


46  IBERVILLE'S  EXPEDITION. 

farther  to  the  west.  The  English  captain  was  not  over  urgent 
for  his  rights,  and  yielded  to  the  French  claim  of  prior  posses- 
sion, though  not  without  intimating  that  he  might  return  later. 

The  occasion  of  this  English  visit  is  now  to  be  accounted  for. 
Heath's  and  There  had  been  a  royal  grant  to  Sir  Robert  Heath  in 
coxe's  grant.  ;[g27,  covcring  a  stretch  of  the  Carolina  coast  from 
31°  to  36°  north  latitude,  and  extending  westward  under  the 
sea-to-sea  principle  for  which  the  English  contended.  Doctor 
Daniel  Coxe  had  recently  bought  this  patent  of  "  Carolana,"  — 
as  it  was  called  in  honor  of  Charles  I.,  —  understanding  that 
it  did  not  cover  within  those  parallels  what  the  Spaniards 
occupied  at  St.  Augustine  and  in  New  Mexico.  The  property 
had  come  to  Coxe  directly  from  Lord  Maltravers,  the  original 
purchaser  from  Heath.  A  year  before,  1698,  Coxe  had  sent  a 
Colonel  Welch  to  explore  the  country,  and  it  was  claimed  that 
he  had  traveled  from  Charleston  to  the  Mississippi.  We  find 
his  route  laid  down  on  English  maps,  and  a  son  of  Coxe,  in 
1722,  published  journals  which  were  alleged  to  have  been  kept 
by  those  who  made  these  inland  trips.  This  publication  was  at 
a  time  when  the  younger  Coxe  was  seeking  to  make  the  coun- 
try known,  and  was  trying  to  induce  immigration  in  order  to 
render  his  heritage  profitable.  These,  and  other  things  in 
this  "  Carolana  "  book  of  1722,  have  been  much  doubted,  being 
looked  upon  as  mere  inventions  contrived  to  bolster  Coxe's 
claim  against  the  French  by  asserting  priority  for  English 
explorations.  Some  such  pretensions  were  palpable  invention, 
as  when,  to  antedate  the  French  occupation  under  La  Salle,  it 
was  claimed  that  some  English  had  traversed  the  length  of  the 
Mississippi  in  1676. 

Coxe,  the  father,  had  proposed  to  found  a  commonwealth  on 
his  patent,  and  had  talked  of  a  stock  company  to  back  it  with 
eight  thousand  shares  at  five  pounds  each.  He  sought  at  the 
same  time  to  catch  the  pious  by  an  avowed  intention  to  propa- 
gate the  gospel  among  the  Indians.  In  1698,  he  had  fitted  out 
two  armed  ships,  which  took  a  company  of  French  Huguenots 
and  some  English  gentlemen,  with  the  alleged  object  of  settling 

Note.  The  opposite  map  is  from  Mitchell's  Map  of  the  British  Colonies  (1755).  It  shows  the 
westerly  part  of  the  supposed  route  of  Colonel  Welch  through  the  Chickasaw  country  to  the  Mis- 
sissippi. The  route  leaves  Charleston,  S.  C,  crosses  the  Savannah  at  Fort  Moore  (Augusta),  and 
extends  to  the  west. 


48  IBERVILLE'S  EXPEDITION. 

and  building  a  fort  somewhere  on  the  Mississippi.  The  expe- 
dition made  its  way  to  Charleston,  where  the  new  colonists 
found  so  much  to  attract  them  that  they  did  not  proceed  far- 
ther. A  single  ship,  however,  actually  went  ahead  to  explore, 
and  entering  the  river  was  the  one  met  by  Bienville  at  the  Eng- 
lish Turn. 

It  seemed  to  all  but  the  French  that  this  stray  ship  was  the 
first  really  ocean-going  vessel  to  enter  the  Great  River  from  the 
sea.  The  English  captain  never  carried  out  his  threat  to  return, 
and  all  the  plans  of  settlement  which  Coxe  had  formed  with 
the  royal  approval  were  broken  up  by  the  death  of  William  III. 

So  the  French  were,  in  fact,  without  a  contestant  on  the  side 
English  ^^  *^^  Gulf ;  but  the  future  necessity  of  blocking  the 
traders.  passcs  of  the  AUegliauies,  to  check  the  English  as 
La  Salle  had  contemplated,  was  prefigured  in  the  information 
which  Davion  imparted  to  the  anxious  company  at  Biloxi,  and 
which  the  Pascagoulas  who  visited  Fort  Maurepas  confirmed. 
This  was  that  English  traders  had  for  some  time  been  using 
the  trails  over  the  AUeghanies,  and  were  trafficking  among  the 
Choctaws  and  Chickasaws. 

Early  in  December,  1699,  the  cannon  at  Ship  Island  an- 
iberviiie's  uounccd  tlic  rctum  of  Iberville.  He  brought  with 
arrival.  j^j^^  sixty  Canadian  bushrangers  and  a  store  of  pro- 
visions. He  cheered  Sauvole  and  Bienville  with  new  commis- 
sions which  the  government  had  intrusted  to  him.  IberviUe 
himself  was  under  instructions  to  discover  what  the  country 
could  furnish  in  furs,  pearls,  and  ores,  and  to  ascertain  if  a 
culture  of  silk  were  possible. 

He  had  brought  with  him  an  adventurous  fellow,  Juchereau 

de  St.  Denis,  of  whom  we  shall  hear  more.  A  ge- 
and  lT^       ologist,  Le  Sucur  by  name,  had  been  also  sent  over, 

and  it  was  his  mission  to  see  what  use  he  could  make 
of  the  "green  earth"  which  he  had  some  years  before  discov- 
ered while  exploring  one  of  the  upper  and  western  affluents  of 
the  Mississippi.  A  party,  including  Iberville  and  Le  Sueur, 
started  towards  Lake  Pontchartrain,  and  here  took  their  lighter 
boats  across  the  morass  to  a  bit  of  upland  that  seemed  safe 

Note.  The  oppo.site  map  is  from  Danville's  Carte  de  la  Louisiane,  1732-1752,  showing  the 
position  of  the  Bayagoulas,  Honmas,  etc. 


[From  Jefiferys'  Course  of  (he 
Mississippi  Biver  from  Baya- 
goulas  to  the  Sea,  1759,  showing 
the  site  of  Fort  La  Boulaye 
and  the  first  settlement  on  the 
river.] 


<^>>  ^ 

'^^9^"^' 
>> 


&>-' 


O^    rpji^ 


^cha"^ 


HOMANN,   1720(7). 
[Showing  the  route  of  Touty  from  the  Chickasaw  country.] 


52  IBERVILLE'S  EXPEDITION. 

from  overflow.  The  episode  of  the  English  ship  and  the  sto- 
Fort  on  the  ^^^^  ^^  English  traders  rendered  it  necessary  to  be 
Mississippi,  prepared  against  attempts  to  eject  them,  and  on  this 
higher  land  Iberville  determined  to  erect  a  fort.  It  was  about 
fifty-four  miles  from  the  Gulf,  and  the  site  is  marked  on  later 
maps. 

It  was  now  January,  1700,  and  when  the  palisades  were  up, 
jjjjjt  Bienville  was  put  in  command.     In  February,  while 

appears.  they  wcrc  still  at  work  on  the  fort,  they  were  sur- 
prised by  the  appearance  of  Henri  de  Tonty,  who  came  with 
boats  loaded  with  peltry  and  manned  by  Canadian  boatmen. 
He  had  left  his  Rock  on  the  Illinois,  and  had  stopped  on  the 
way  to  trade  with  the  Arkansas  Indians. 

While  the  tidings  which  Tonty  brought  were  still  fresh,  Le 
Le  Sueur's  Sucur,  witli  twcuty  mcu  and  some  Indian  guides, 
expedition,  started  to  find  his  mines  of  green  earth.  He  was  no 
stranger  in  the  country  at  the  north,  having  spent  six  or  seven 
years  among  the  Sioux.  During  this  period  he  had  been  a 
strong  advocate  of  measures  to  frustrate  the  English  attempts 
at  opening  trade  along  the  Ohio.  He  had  taken  some  chiefs 
of  this  distant  nation  to  Quebec,  and  Frontenac  had  formally 
placed  the  Dacotah  tribes  under  French  protection. 

Concerning  the  expedition  of  which  Le  Sueur  was  now  in 
charge  we  have  a  good  account  in  Penicault's  narrative,  which 
is  given  more  consecutively  by  Margry  than  in  the  uncertain 
English  version  by  French,  and  this  may  be  supplemented  by 
the  memoir  of  the  Chevalier  de  Beaurain,  also  given  in  Margry. 

There  was  a  new  cause  for  disquiet  when  the  party  reaching 
the  Arkansas  found  a  Carolina  trader  at  work.  In  August,  they 
were  at  Lake  Pepin,  and  saw  the  stockade  built  a  few  years 
before  by  Nicolas  Perrot  left  standing  for  chance  traders  to 
occupy.  In  September,  they  had  passed  the  Falls  of  St.  An- 
thony and  entered  the  St.  Peter,  now  the  Minnesota,  River. 
Canoeing  into  one  of  its  tributaries,  the  Blue  Earth  or  Green 
River,  as  it  was  indiscriminately  called,  at  a  point  a  little  above 
44°  north  latitude,  as  he  supposed  it,  Le  Sueur  built  a  stockade, 
and  called  it  after  the  royal  farmer-general.  Fort  I'Huillier. 
This  was  in  October,  1701. 

Slaughtering  buffalo  and  freezing  the  flesh,  Le  Sueur's  men 
began  to  lay  in  provisions.     There  was  need  of  it,  for  seven 


LE  SUEUR. 


63 


Canadian  traders  soon  joined  them  and  spent  the  winter,  de- 
pending on  Le  Sueur's  stores.  The  mine  they  had  sought  was 
close  by,  and  they  began  to  work  it.  Wandering  Sioux  passed, 
and  they  accumulated  some  skins  by  barter. 

When  Callieres  at  Quebec  heard  of  these  doings  of  Le  Sueur, 


by  which  the  trade  of  the  far  west  was  diverted  to  the  Missis- 
sippi, he  wrote  complainingly  to  the  ministry,  and  asked  what 
was  to  become  of  poor  Canada  if  such  a  course  was  to  be  per- 
mitted.    It  was   hard,  if   not  impossible,  to  enforce  edicts  in 


64  IBERVILLE'S   EXPEDITION. 

the  wilderness,  and,  as  Tonty's  ventures  had  shown,  trade  had 
ab-eady  indicated  its  future  channels. 

In  May,  1701,  Le  Sueur,  loading  his  canoes  with  a  portion 
of  the  green  earth  which  he  had  dug  out,  —  about  four  thousand 
pounds,  —  descended  to  the  lower  stations,  leaving  a  garrison  to 
hold  the  fort.  Misfortune  overtook  him,  and  he  never  saw  his 
fort  or  his  mine  again.  The  Sioux  finally  drove  off  his  men, 
and  the  fort  was  abandoned. 

After  Le  Sueur  had  started  up  the  river,  Iberville  proceeded 
leisurely  northward  from  his  fort.     Anions:  the  Bava- 

Iberville  i  i        i  i      i  i         r>n  •    i  • 

ascends  the    goulas  he  Icamcd  that  the  Chickasaws  were  ffettinsr 

Mississippi.      *?  oo 

nrearms  from  the  iLnglish.  It  was  more  than  ever 
apparent,  if  the  colonization  upon  which  he  had  started  was 
to  succeed,  that  an  effort  must  be  made  to  combine  the  tribes 
of  the  Mississippi  in  alliance  with  the  French.  The  passing 
through  the  low  country  with  its  monotonous  canebrakes  had 
The  little  exhilaration  in  it,  but  when  the  party  reached  the 

Natchez.  elcvatcd  territory  of  the  Natchez,  there  were  new  sen- 
sations in  store  for  them,  not  only  in  the  air  and  scenery,  but 
in  the  character  of  that  people.  This  tribe  were,  perhaps,  dis- 
tinctly sun-worshipers,  though  it  is  pretty  evident  from  the 
modern  researches  that  throughout  the  continent  all  Indians 
were  accustomed  to  bend  to  the  supreme  orb,  as  recent  scientists 
turn  to  it  for  the  origin  of  light,  heat,  magnetism,  and  electri- 
city. Here,  among  the  sun-worshipers,  Iberville  found  St. 
Cosme  conducting  a  mission.  This  j>riest,  with  Montigny  and 
Davion,  formed,  as  we  have  seen,  the  advance-guard  of  the 
church,  doing  from  the  side  of  Canada  what  Iberville  was 
hoping  to  accomplish  from  below,  so  as  to  secure  by  the  church, 
as  well  as  by  the  influence  of  trade,  the  control  of  the  valley. 

The  rites  of  the  Natchez,  as  the  French  saw  them,  both  at- 
tracted and  repelled  them.  There  was  enough  of  a  sort  of  mock 
grandeur  in  them  to  make  theorists  associate  these  children  of 
the  sun  with  the  Aztecs,  and  even  with  those  early  peoples  of 
Mexico  sometimes  termed  the  Toltecs.  There  was  the  same 
constructive  energy  in  raising  earth  mounds  for  their  buildings 
which  the  native  American  showed  almost  everywhere.     This 

Note.    The  opposite  map,  from  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale  at  Paris,  is  given  in  Marcel's  Repro- 
duciions,  No.  17.    It  shows  results  of  the  explorations  of  La  Salle,  corrected  by  those  of  Iberville, 


s4  i.  ^>  I 


^  ^  f  ft 


^ 


+  f 


56  IBERVILLE'S   EXPEDITION. 

has  influenced  some  etlmologists  of  a  later  day  to  trace  a  con- 
nection for  them  with  the  so-called  mound-builders.  Their 
government  had  some  features  which  ineluced  a  belief  in  the 
despotism  of  their  headmen,  but  American  Indians  were  as 
much  committee-ridden  as  the  American  people  are  to-day ;  and 
it  is  doubtful  if  their  polity  varied  from  that  of  the  rest  of  the 
aborigines  of  the  continent  in  giving  a  kind  of  representative 
character  to  their  civil  control. 

Montigny,  whose  visit  to  Biloxi  has  been  already  mentioned, 
had  accompanied  St.  Cosme  to  this  region  and  was 

Montigny  ,  .  .      .  i  m 

audtiie  conductnig  a  mission  among  the  iaensas,  a  tribe 
upon  one  of  that  link  of  lakes  which  lay  just  west  of 
the  Mississippi.  While  Bienville  stayed  among  the  Natchez 
to  j)repare  an  expedition  for  the  Red  River,  Iberville  made 
Montigny  a  hurried  visit.  On  his  return,  he  found 
ontiieRed  Bieiiville  had  his  jjarty  well  organized.  Tonty  and 
St.  Denis  were  to  accompany  him,  and  the  chief  object 
of  the  undertaking  was  to  reconnoitre  the  Spanish  jjosts  in  that 
direction,  for  as  they  understood  the  Indians,  these  rivals  were 
established  up  the  Red  River.  It  was  now  March  (1700). 
The  country  being  naturally  swampy  and  the  spring  not  a 
favorable  season,  they  returned  without  accomplishing  their 
purpose.  They  went  apparently  about  a  hundred  leagues  be- 
yond the  Natchitoches,  the  leading  tribe  upon  the  lower  parts 
of  the  Red  River. 

Tonty  soon  left  his  new  friends,  to  go  back  to  the  Tonicas 
with  presents.  It  was  now  agreed  that  Tonty  and  Davion 
should  undertake  to  keep  the  Indians  on  the  upper  river  from 
forming  an  English  alliance,  while  Iberville  guarded  the  lower 
The  Indians  rivcr  with  a  similar  purpose.  There  was  need  of  pre- 
at  tiie  north,  cipj^atc  actioii  at  tlic  uortli,  for  the  English  were  be- 
coming active,  since  Robert  Livingston  was  striving  to  bring 
about  the  occupation  of  Detroit  as  a  vantage-ground  for  forcing 
a  peace  between  the  Iroquois  and  the  western  Indians,  and  in 
that  way  to  bring  them  into  support  of  the  English  schemes. 

In  the  Illinois  country  the  dread  of  the  Iroquois  had  driven 
Kaskaskia  ^^^^  missiou,  whcrc  Father  Pinet  had  been  working, 
mission.  from  tlic  old  Kaskaskia  on  the  Illinois  River  to  the 
site  of  the  modern  town  of  that  name  on  the  peninsula  between 
the  Kaskaskia  River  and  the  Mississippi,  and  two  miles  away 


THE  INDIAN   TRADE.  57 

fi'om  the  latter  river.  This  transference,  made  under  Jacques 
Gravier  and  Gabriel  Marest,  had  probably  been  accomiDlished 
in  the  autumn  o£  1700.  The  mission  thus  became  one  of  the 
earliest  permanent  settlements  near  the  banks  of  the 

Traffic 

Great  River,  within  easy  support  of  the  increasing   on  the 
traffic  of  the  French  up  and  down  the  stream.     This 


BIENVILLE.     [From  Margry.] 


traffic  was  soon  to  grow  perceptibly  under  the  policy  which 
Callieres,  the  governor  of  Canada,  was  pursuing  in  consequence 
of  orders  from  France ;  namely,  to  diminish  the  number  of  posts 
in  the  western  country,  so  as  to  avoid  the  cost  of  garrisons.  It 
was  thought  that  as  a  result  the  peltry  would  be  taken  down 


58  IBERVILLE'S   EXPEDITION. 

the  Lakes  to  Montreal.  As  it  turned  out,  the  injunction  worked 
quite  as  much  to  the  advantage  of  the  new  trade  springing  up 
along  the  Mississippi,  since  the  bushrangers,  pursuing  a  contra- 
band trade  with  the  Indians,  better  escaped  police  observations 
by  carrying  their  skins  down  the  Mississippi.  All  this  soon 
improved  the  prospects  of  the  new  Louisiana  colony. 

It  was  about  this  time,  also,  that  Du  Charleville,  a  kinsman 

of  Bienville,  sought,  as  we  learn  from  Le  Page  du 
of  the  Pratz,  to  extend  trade  connections  farther  to  the  north 

by  following  up  the  Mississippi  to  its  source.  The 
story  indicates  that,  leaving  the  Illinois,  he  went  up  to  the 
Palls  of  St.  Anthony  and  a  hundred  leagues  beyond.  Here  he 
met  a  party  of  Sioux  hunters,  who  had  some  reason  for  telling 
him  that  the  distance  from  the  falls  to  the  source  was  equal  to 
that  from  the  falls  to  the  sea.  The  exaggeration  discouraged 
him,  and  the  springs  of  the  Great  River  were  for  a  long  period 
to  remain  unknown. 

At  the  source  of  the  Ohio,  the  western  outposts  of  the  Iro- 
The  quois  Confederacy  were  held  by  the  Senecas,  mainly 

Iroquois.  jjj  ^]-^g  J^i^encli  iutcrcsts,  while  the  English  supremacy 
was  still  maintained  among  the  eastern  portion  of  the  league, 
nearer  Albany.  These  remoter  Indians  had,  in  the  summer  of 
1700,  been  induced  through  French  agency  to  make  peace  with 
the  western  tribes,  not  quite  in  the  sjjirit  of  Livingston's  pro- 
ject, and  thi'ough  this  conciliation  there  was  to  be  an  exchange 
of  prisoners.  This  bore  hard  on  the  Iroquois,  as  their  inces- 
sant wars  had  depleted  their  fighting  force,  which  they  had 
sought  to  replenish  by  the  adoption  of  these  same  prisoners. 
The  result  was  that  the  exchange  was  unequal,  since  the  con- 
federates could  only  produce  six  warriors  whom  they  had  not 
adopted  against  the  much  greater  number  brought  down  to 
Montreal  by  the  western  tribes.  Furthermore,  the  conference 
gave  Callieres  the  opportunity  which  he  desired  of  extolling 
French  faith  and  denouncing  English  perfidy,  and  he  made  the 
most  of  it.  He  had  good  abettors  in  the  Jesuits,  for  whom  the 
way  was  now  clear  to  settle  in  the  Iroquois  country.  It  was  a 
question  how  long  the  Canadian  governor  could  maintain  the 
hold  upon  the  confederates  which  he  flattered  himself  he  had 
now  acquired. 


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60  IBERVILLE'S   EXPEDITION. 

This  condition  of  things  at  the  north  and  northeast  and  the 
Iberville  purposes  of  the  local  governments,  as  well  as  the  views 
Mississi  1  entertained  at  Paris,  were  important  aids  to  the  new 
trade.  movcments  on  the  lower   Mississippi.      Iberville,  as 

we  have  seen,  had  pushed  far  enough  to  meet  the  traders  and 
missionaries  coming  from  the  St.  Lawrence  valley.  Moreover, 
he  had  derived  encouragement  from  Tonty's  conceptions  of  the 
drift  of  trade.  He  was  consequently  able,  on  the  same  day 
that  Bienville  started  for  the  RedTliver,  to  turn  back  from  the 
Natchez  with  some  confidence  in  the  future  of  the  Great  Valley. 
When  he  reached  Biloxi,  his  impressions  were  again  confirmed, 
since  the  policy  of  Callieres  was  such  that  Louisiana  would  get 
most  of  the  profit.  This  reassurance  came  from  finding  that 
another  party  of  Canadian  rangers  had  come  with  peltry  for  a 
market,  flying  from  the  restrictive  measures  which  the  Canadian 
government  was  enforcing  at  Mackinac. 

Late  in  May,  1700,  Iberville,  leaving  Bienville  to  manage 
the  colony,  was  again  on  shipboard  bound  for  France,  having 
apparently  little  apprehension  of  any  trouble  with  the  Spaniards. 
s  aniards  at  I*  "^^^  "®*  long,  liowevcr,  after  he  had  gone  before 
BUoxi.  ^jjg  governor  of  Pensacola  appeared  at  Biloxi  to  pro- 

test against  the  French  occupation  of  any  territory  along  the 
GuK  shore.  His  claim  foreboded  peril,  inasmuch  as  he  asserted 
that  Florida  and  Mexico  were  contiguous,  and  were  not  to  be 
wedged  apart  by  intruders.  He  was  content  at  present  to  couch 
his  protest  in  words  merely. 

On  the  return  voyage  to  Pensacola,  the  Spanish  ships  were 
wrecked,  and  such  of  the  crews  as  escaped  the  waves  were  shortly 
afterward  back  in  Biloxi,  suppliants  for  relief. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THROUGHOUT   THE   VALLEY. 

1700-1709. 

Iberville's  movements  on  the  lower  Mississippi  had  so 
much  aroused  the  Illinois  tribes  that  they  showed  a  disposition 
to  move  down  the  river  to  be  nearer  the  new-comers,  oravier  and 
Father  Gravier,  who  had  left  the  Miami  mission  on  ^aakaskia. 
September  8,  1700,  encountered  the  Kaskaskias,  a  group  of  the 
Illinois,  weU  on  their  migrating  way ;  but  he  finally  prevailed 
upon  their  chiefs  to  stop  at  the  modern  Kaskaskia.  The  priest 
himself  then  started  down  the  stream  to  see  what  was  going  on. 
Some  Frenchmen  accompanied  him  in  five  canoes.  They  went 
on,  killing  buffalo  upon  the  banks  and  leaving  their  ^^^^.^^  ^^ 
carcasses  for  the  wolves.     Passing  the  mouth  of  the   scendsthe 

'-'  ,  Mississippi. 

river  now  called  the  Ohio,  Gravier  mentions  how  that 
stream,  known  to  him  as  the  Ouabache  (Wabash),  is  formed 
by  three  tributaries,  the  present  Wabash,  the  Ohio  (above  the 
confluence  of  the  Wabash),  and  the  affluent  which  comes  from 
the  southeast,  upon  which  live  the  Shawnees,  who  trade  with 
the  English  of  Virginia  and  Carolina.  The  Indians  at  this 
time  caUed  the  main  river,  debouching  into  the  Mississippi,  the 
Akansea,  after  a  tribe  formerly  dwelling  there,  but  which  was 
now  seated  farther  down  the  Mississippi. 

As  Gravier  went  on,  he  tells  us  that  he  actually  boxed  the 
compass  with  the  windings  of  the  current.  In  one  place  he 
found  some  Mohegans,  of  that  New  England  race  which  had 
fled  west  after  Philip's  war,  and  who  had  been  faithful  some 
years  earlier  to  La  Salle.  They  were  still  trading  their  com- 
modities with  the  English,  and  the  English  guns,  which  he 
soon  after  found  among  the  Akanseas  in  their  new  home,  told 
of  further  inter-tribal  traffic,  if  not  of  direct  contact  with  the 
Carolina  traders.     The    priest  found   among   these   Akanseas 


62  THROUGHOUT   THE    VALLEY. 

some  who  recollected  the  advent  of  Marquette,  then  nearly  a 
score  of  years  gone  by.  The  party  stopped  awhile  for  a  visit 
to  Davion  and  St.  Cosme  among  the  Tonicas,  and  it  was  late 
in  November  when  they  left  the  Natchez.  They  saw  cocks  and 
hens  in  their  villages,  and  conjectured  that  the  progenitors  of 
these  birds  had  been  saved  from  the  wreck  of  some  Christian 
vessel  on  the  Gulf  coast. 

It  was  December  17  when  the  voyagers  reached  the  French 
fort  at  Poverty  Point,  as  it  has  since  been  called,  having  been 
sixty-eight  days  in  coursing  the  Mississippi  from  the  Illinois  to 
its  lower  curves.  In  the  following  February,  while  still  at  Iber- 
ville's fort,  Gravier  wrote  the  letter  which  is  our  main  authority 
for  his  descent  of  the  river,  and  of  which  Dr.  Shea  has  given 
us  a  translation.  In  the  preference  which  Gravier  expressed 
for  the  advantages  of  Biloxi  —  which  he  next  visited  —  we  have 
a  premonition  of  the  final  abandonment  of  this  desolate  Missis- 
sippi stockade. 

During  the  autumn  of  1700,  and  in  the  following  winter, 
Iberville  was    in     France,    considering  future  plans. 

1700-1.  .'  .    *  -^ 

iberviue  in     He  was  urgcd  to  pusli  liis  explorations  westward  to- 

France.  . 

wards  New  Mexico,  and  he  drew  up  a  plan  for  reach- 
ing the  Gulf  of  California.  He  had  his  eye,  too,  on  the  Spanish 
fort  at  Pensacola,  —  a  vision  seldom  obscured  to  his  successors, 
—  and  above  all  he  urged  upon  Pontchartrain  the  military 
defense  of  the  Mississippi  banks  as  making  all  these  projects 
sure,  and  as  giving  a  base  for  a  still  more  important  purpose. 
This  was  to  push  the  English  back  upon  Carolina  and  prevent 
their  selling  arms  to  the  populous  villages  of  the  Cherokees. 

A  population  for  Louisiana  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  all  told, 
Port  at  ^^^  ^^  unhealthy  camp  at  Biloxi,  —  where  Sauvole  soon 
Mobile.  ({\Q(\_  from  the  fever  —  was  not  promising,  unless  the 
home  government  was  prepared  to  give  large  succors.  At  all 
events,  a  more  salubrious  post  seemed  a  necessity,  and  a  site, 
thought  to  secure  it,  was  soon  found  at  the  head  of  Mobile 
Bay.  Boisbriant  was  now  sent  thither,  with  a  party,  to  con- 
struct a  fort. 

Sauvole's  death  had  brought  BienviUe  from  the  Mississippi 
ftervuie  ^^^^  ^^  t2^e  the  general  command  in  the  dreary  waste 
Dec^ber  of  Biloxi,  witli  its  bumiug  sands  and  noxious  damps, 
"'**•  and  here  Iberville  found  him  when,  on  December  15, 


TONTY,  LE  SUEUR,  IBERVILLE.  63 

1701,  accompanied  by  another  brother,  Le  Moyne  de  Serigny, 
he  reached  the  colony.  The  change  to  the  post  at  Mobile  was 
at  once  ordered,  but  Iberville  did  not  remain  to  see  the  new 
position  in  complete  order,  for  another  hurried  visit  to  France 
intervened  before,  in  March,  1702,  he  took  again  the  control, 
and  the  course  of  events  once  more  felt  his  influence. 

Tonty  had  come  (March  25,  1702)  from  the  up-country  with 
a  band  of  Choctaws  and  Chickasaws  in  his  train,  ^he  Indians 
and  it  gave  Iberville  the  opportunity  to  warn  these  Freuchand 
jarring  neighbors  that  the  English  purposed  to  stir  up  ^°g"^^- 
inter-tribal  distrust  till  they  exterminated  each  other.  He 
urged  them  to  a  defensive  alliance.  At  the  same  time  he  sent 
to  Quebec  to  ask  for  missionaries  to  be  sent  among  them  as  the 
best  antidote  to  English  intrigue.  Turning  to  the  other  hand, 
he  equally  sought  to  work  upon  the  fears  of  his  Spanish  neigh- 
bors by  representing  to  them  that  the  French  occupation  of  this 
region  meant  in  reality  giving  the  Spaniards  a  barrier  against 
the  English. 

With  complications  on  all  sides,  the  founder  of  Louisiana, 
with  his  health  imdermined,  was  not  destined  to  see 
his  work  completed.      His  northernmost  outpost,  Le   fortaban- 
Sueur's  Fort  d'Huillier,  even  before  Delisle,  using,  as 
he  says,  the  memoirs  of  that  adventurer,  signified  its  j)osition  on 
his  new  map  of  Louisiana  (1703),  had  been  abandoned  for  fear 
of  the  Sioux,  and  its  destitute  garrison  were  just  now  come  to 
report  their  failure.     It  was  not  a  grateful  outcome  of  all  Iber- 
ville's hopes  of  far-reaching  influence  throughout  the  Great  Val- 
ley.   Burdened  with  such  disappointment  he  returned  to  France, 
never  to  see  his  colony  again.     Pontchartrain,  indeed,   iberviue'g 
recognized  his  merit,  when  he  made  him  "  Commander  ''^^'^  ^^^''^^ 
of  the  Colony  of  the  Mississippi,"  but  he  felt  that  the  title  and 
the  authority  failed  to  carry  with  it  the  material  aid,  in  conces- 
sions of  land,  in  mines,  and  in  negroes,  which  was  necessary  to 
make  his  control  successful. 

He  had  intended  to  return,  but  the  ship  on  which  he  was 
expected  in  August,  1703,  brought  word  that  he  was  too  ill  for 
the  voyage.  He  lived  for  three  years,  and  died  July  9,  1706, 
at  Havana,  whither  he  had  gone  in  command  of  a  fleet  for  the 
purpose  of  driving  the  English  from  the  West  Indies,  and 
harrying  the  Carolina  coast. 


64  THROUGHOUT   THE    VALLEY. 

After  the  departure  of  his  chief  in  1702,  Bienville  was  left 
to  his  own  resources.  The  Indians  in  the  up-country 
command.  abovc  Mobilc  wcre  active,  and  it  was  thought  that 
the  English  were  inciting  the  Alibamons  to  pillage. 
To  chastise  them,  Bienville,  taking  Tonty  and  St.  Denis  as 
lieutenants,  marched  against  them.  His  party  suffered  much, 
and  o-ot  no  real  help  from  some  Choctaws  and  Mobilians,  who 
pretended  to  act  as  allies.  The  movement,  therefore,  failed  ; 
but  later  he  attempted  another  by  water,  and  succeeded  in  burn- 
ing the  enemy's  camp  in  the  night. 

Not  long  after,  Bienville  determined  to  abandon  the  fort  on 
the  Mississippi  and  concentrate  his  force  at  Mobile,  where  Fort 
St.  Louis  had  already  been  built,  above  the  modern 
tions  with  city.  This  union  of  his  forces  was  not  made  too  soon, 
'  for  the  tribes  north  of  Mobile  were  becoming  turbu- 
lent ;  and  it  was  convenient,  if  not  just,  to  charge  their  imeasi- 
ness  upon  English  machinations.  There  was  perhaps  more 
certainty  in  the  Spanish  intrigues  to  set  the  Chickasaws  upon 
the  Choctaws,  and  as  the  latter  were  generally  inclined  to  the 
French  interest,  Bienville  tried  to  make  the  two  tribes  friends 
as  the  surest  way  to  gain  immunity  from  the  enmity  of  the 
Chickasaws.  The  mediation  did  not  prove  long  successful, 
for  the  Chickasaws  found  their  profit  in  disposing  of  Choctaws 
^^^  taken  in  battle  as   slaves  to  the  Carolinians.     Later, 

EngUsh.  when  they  drove  the  Tonicas  upon  the  Houmas,  there 
was  thought  to  be  another  manifestation  of  English  intrigue. 
Colonel  Moore,  with  a  body  of  Carolinians,  was  making  the 
English  name  a  dreaded  one  to  every  Indian  who  looked  to  the 
French  for  protection. 

Distractions  like  these,  as  rumors  came  in,  served  at  least  to 
Life  at  turu  the  poor  colonists  at  Mobile  from  their  miseries. 

Mobile.  These  were  not  unmixed  with  apprehensions  all  the 
while  lest  the  English  should  strike  them  by  sea,  supplementing 
the  land  attacks  upon  their  Choctaw  allies.  A  vessel  arriving 
with  marriageable  damsels  relieved  life  somewhat  by  a  month 
of  weddings.  The  poor  craft,  however,  had  touched  at  San  Do- 
mingo and  been  infected  with  yellow  fever.  The  fearful  mal- 
ady soon  got  a  foothold,  ^nd  among  those  who  succumbed  was 
the  valiant  Tonty,  —  not  such  an  end  as  one  woidd  wish  for  his 
chivalrous  nature.     The  ship  which  was  the  source  of  all  these 


BIENVILLE  AND  MOBILE.  65 

loves  and  woes  had  not  enough  men  escaping  the  fever  to  navi- 
gate her  away,  and  some  who  had  come  to  stay  as  soldiers,  and 
were  sorely  needed,  were  obliged  to  return  as  seamen.  Cloth- 
ing ran  short,  and  attempts  were  made  to  supply  it  by  spin- 
ning-bees. New  ships  would  come,  but  somehow  through  the 
weary  months  the  old  miseries  would  recur. 

There  was  some  relief  when  Spain  became  the  ally  of  France 
in  new  hostilities,  and  there  was  an  interchange  of  French  and 
civilities  between  Mobile  and  Pensacola,  while  certain  Spaniards. 
courteous  graces  brightened  life  ;  but  Bienville  never  forgot 
that  Pensacola  was  a  threat,  though  he  had  the  skill  to  hide 
his  hostile  hopes.  France  had  too  much  to  do  in  Europe  to 
grant  the  aid  that  was  vital  in  Louisiana,  and  immigration  did 
little  to  repair  the  losses  of  the  colony.  With  all  such  symptoms 
of  decadence,  nothing  but  a  united  and  respected  government 
could  give  a  hopeful  turn  to  affairs,  and  this  was  wanting. 
Commandant  and  priest  disagreed,  and  violent  religious  factions 
arose.  Squads  of  bushrangers  came  down  from  the  upper  coun- 
try with  peltry,  but  it  was  rather  the  promise  than  the  fulfill- 
ment of  trade.  La  Salle,  the  commissary,  was  intractable,  and 
defied  Bienville  till  the  commander's  life  was  hardly  less  unbear- 
able than  that  of  the  meanest  hind  who  slunk  away  to  the 
Indians  to  avoid  starving. 

When  tidings  came  in  October,  1706,  of  Iberville's  death  at 
Havana,  faction  became    rampant,  and  before  many 

...  Condition  of 

months  had  passed   Bienville's  friends  had  deserted  Mobile. 

^  .  1706. 

him,  and  the  poor  man  was  powerless.  The  distressed 
colony  possessed  now  less  than  three  hundred  inhabitants,  and 
more  than  two  thirds  of  these  were  soldiers  and  slaves,  and 
nearly  all,  in  some  way,  were  pensioners  of  the  public  chest.  It 
was  apparent  that  the  enemies  of  Bienville  had  triumphed, 
when  orders  were  received  for  his  recall.  Presently,  Diron 
d'Artaguette  reached  the  colony  (February,  1708).  He  was  a 
man  fit  to  shape  a  policy  ;  but  a  treacherous  future  confronted 
him,  for  there  were  ugly  stories  in  the  air  of  a  projected  combi- 
nation of  the  Cherokees  and  the  Alibamons  ajjainst  the  French 
and  their  Mobilian  allies.  It  was  of  course  a  disguise  for 
English  hostility,  or  at  least  was  thought  so. 


66  THROUGHOUT   THE    VALLEY. 

For  some  years,  tlie  rival  interests  of  the  French  and  English 
The  Ohio  Centred  in  the  region  between  the  Ohio  and  the 
country.  Lakcs,  wliich  ever  since  the  extinction  of  the  Fries 
by  the  Iroquois  in  the  middle  of  the  preceding  century  had 
been  almost  untenanted  except  by  savage  hunters.  Of  late, 
there  had  been  a  movement  among  the  aborigines  to  reoccupy 
this  region.  The  danger  forced  the  Virginians  on  the  Atlantic 
slope  to  push  settlements  up  toward  the  mountains,  so  as  to 
hold  the  Appalachians  like  a  barrier  against  the  threatened  and 
barbarous  inroads. 

The  easy  portages  which  connected  this  Ohio  territory  with 
the  basin  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  the  natural  tribute  which 
the  region  could  pay  to  the  lower  Mississippi,  had  soon  caused 
an  eager  rivalry  between  the  governments  of  Canada  and  Lou- 
isiana for  its  control,  and  made  them  suppliants  in  turn  to  the 
home  government  for  the  jurisdiction  of  it. 

Iberville's  policy  had  far  better  grounds  than  that  which  Cal- 
iberviUeand  litres  had  demonstrated  in  the  St.  Lawrence  basin. 
Cauieres.  j^  ^  Communication  to  the  minister  at  Paris,  the 
Louisiana  leader  had  pointed  out  the  mistakes  of  the  Canadian 
system  in  yielding  to  the  hunter  and  excluding  the  tiller  of 
the  soil.  This  was  a  fatal  blunder,  he  contended,  if  France 
had  any  hope  of  maintaining  the  country  against  the  English. 
Iberville's  plan  for  the  control  of  the  upper  Mississippi  basin 
was  to  establish  posts  near  the  mouths  of  the  Missouri,  the 
Ohio,  and  the  Arkansas,  and  to  make  these  stations  permanent 
centres  of  French  influence.  He  urged  also  at  a  later  day  to 
have  the  tribes  of  the  Illinois  settled  along  the  banks  of  the 
lower  Ohio.  All  this  was  a  distinct  denial  of  the  English 
claim  to  this  region,  and  just  at  the  same  time  Governor  Penn 
was  expressing  the  views  of  the  colonial  governors,  when  he 
said  that  "  we  take  the  south  side  of  the  river  [St.  Lawrence] 
and  lakes  of  Canada  to  be  our  just  and  reasonable  bounda- 
ries." Bellomont  of  New  York  was  also  at  this  time  plan- 
ning a  reconnaissance  through  the  Iroquois  country  along  the 
verge  of  the  Great  Valley  itself,  and  gave  instructions  to  that 
end  to  Colonel  Homer  in  September,  1700,  bidding  him  par- 
ticularly "  to  go  and  view  a  well  or  spring  which  is  eight  miles 
beyond  the  Sineks'  [Senecas']  farther  castle,  which  they  have 
told  me  blazes  up  in  a  flame  when  a  light  coal  or  firebrand  is 


ENGLISH  AND  FRENCH  CLAIMS.  67 

put  into  it."     These  burning  springs  ai'e  over  the  divide,  and 
their  waters  flow  into  the  Alleghany. 

Meanwhile  the  rival  powers  of  London  and  Paris  were  plan- 
ning counter  movements  to  secure  the  aid  of  the  Iro-  English  and 
quois  for  their  respective  purposes.  Robert  Living-  Counter 
ston,  in  May,  1701,  while  warning  the  Lords  of  Trade  '=^'"'"^- 
of  the  French  purpose  to  "  encompass  the  English  "  by  posses- 
sion of  the  Mississippi  basin,  represented  the  Iroquois  as  a 
"  constant  barrier  of  defense  between  Virginia  and  Maryland 
and  the  French,  and  by  their  constant  vigilance  they  had  pre- 
vented the  French  making  any  descent  that  way."  He  fur- 
ther reports  that  the  French  were  using  the  best  artifices  they 
could  to  weaken  this  alliance  with  the  English,  and  complains 
that  the  selfish  purposes  of  the  Albany  tradesmen  were  a  check 
upon  pioneering  towards  the  west,  because  they  thought  that 
their  own  peltry  trade  would  be  intercepted  by  it. 

To  counteract  all  such  adverse  influences,  Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor Nanfan  of  New  York  is   said  to  have  entered 
upon  a  treaty  July  9,  1701,  with  the  confederates  at  treaty. 
Albany,  by  which  the  region  north  of  the  Ohio  and 
stretching  to  the  Mississippi  and  Illinois  rivers  was  ceded  to  the 
English  king.     The  same  treaty  covered  also  a  similar  cession 
of  the  territory  north  of  Lake  Erie,  stretching  east  to  the  Ot- 
tawa.    The  Iroquois  based  their  right  in  this  northern  portion 
on  their  driving  the  Hurons  out  of  it  in  1650,  and  their  hold 
on  the  southern  part  to  their  conquest  of  the  Fries  and  others 
at  a  later  period.     The  whole  cession  constituted  what  the  Iro- 
quois  called  their  beaver-hunting  grounds.     What  purports  to 
be  this  deed  of  1701  has  been  printed  in  the  New  York  Colo- 
nial Documents   (iv.  908),  setting  forth  that  the  grantors  in 
return  expected  "  to  be  protected  therein  by  the  crown  of  Eng- 
land ; "  but  there  has  been  a  suspicion  that  the  document  was  in 
some  part  at  least  a  device,  trumped  up  at  a  later  day,  to  ante- 
date a  treaty  which  the  French  made  at  Montreal  in  the  follow- 
ing August,  and  it   is  not  easy  to  see  how  both  can  be 
genuine.     The   Montreal  treaty  was  made  under  the  treaty. 
urgent  appeal  of  the  Canadian   company,  who  com- 
plained of  the  English  inroads  by  the  Alleghany  and  Ohio  riv- 
ers.    Callieres,  as .  has  been    already  indicated,    had   brought 
about  the  conciliation  in  it  of  the  Iroquois  and  western  tribes, 


\ 


68  THROUGHOUT   THE    VALLEY. 

and  liad  bound  the  confederates  by  a  promise  to  prevent  the 
erection  of  English  posts  throughout  their  country.  The  French 
claimed,  and  not  without  warrant,  that  they  had  thus  made 
themselves  actually  the  arbiters  of  the  entire  Indian  question, 
to  which  not  only  the  Iroquois  but  the  western  Indians  were 
parties.  But  Indian  faith  was  dependent  on  annual  gratuities, 
and,  as  the  French  soon  found,  not  always  sure  at  that.  They 
had,  however,  secured  what  they  most  needed  just  at  present, 
and  that  was  the  neutrality  of  the  confederates  in  an  impend- 
ing war  with  the  English.  They  were  not  quite  as  success- 
ful with  their  own  woodsmen,  for  the  Canadian  bushrangers 
were  fully  inclined  to  profit  by  the  better  opportunities  of  trade 
which  were  offered  at  Albany.  Bellomont  had  been  petitioned 
English  ^y  ^^^o  of  tlicm  to  bc  allowcd  to  come  to  the  English 
FrendT'*"^  mart,  and  these  applicants  said  they  were  but  the 
bushrangers,  forerunncrs  of  others,  —  "  thirty  brave  fellows  laden 
with  peltry,"  as  they  said ;  and  one  Samuel  York,  who  had  been 
a  prisoner  in  Canada,  testified  to  the  eagerness  of  these  north- 
ern rangers  to  cast  in  their  lot  with  the  English. 

When,  in  September,  James  the  Stuart  exile  died,  and  the 
French  king  acknowledged  the  Pretender,  war  between 

War.    1702.  o  o  ' 

England  and  France  was  inevitable.  King  William 
died  in  March,  1702 ;  Cornbury,  the  royal  governor  of  New 
York,  arrived  in  May,  but  Queen  Anne  was  not  proclaimed 
there  till  June  17.  War  meanwhile  had  been  declared  on 
May  4,  and  when  the  news  of  the  opening  conflict  reached 
Canada,  Callieres  strengthened  the  fortifications  of  Quebec,  and 
set  to  work  at  the  same  time  to  turn  the  assured  neutrality  of 
the  Iroquois  into  pronounced  hostility  to  the  English.  Neither 
he  nor  Vaudreuil,  who  upon  Callieres's  death  (1703)  became 
governor,  was  able  to  do  more  than  hold  the  confederates  to 
their  neutrality. 

It  was  important  for  England  that  the  union  of  the  French 
and  Spanish  crowns  should  not  close  the  trade  of  the  New  World 
to  English  merchants  ;  and  it  soon  became  evident  that  a  strug- 
gle was  at  hand.  The  French  dreamed  of  the  conquest  of  New 
York  and  Boston,  and  their  emissaries  had  for  some  years  been 
clandestinely  making  maps  of  the  approach  by  sea  to  those 
ports.     The  English  hoped  that  a  small  army  and  a  few  fri- 


THE  ENGLISH  COLONIES.  69 

gates  would  drive  the  French  from  Canada,  and  Dudley  was 
urging  such  an  undertaking  upon  the  Massachusetts  Assembly, 
for  it  was  these  Canadian  French  who  stood  most  in  the  way 
of  the  EngHsh  in  efforts  to  penetrate  to  the  Mississippi  by  the 
Ohio  route. 

The  war  meant  all  this,  but  even  more,  to  the  English  colonies ; 
for  it    implied  a  better  acquaintance    of    one    colony 

■*■  -^  .  *'     War  and  the 

with  another,  and  New  England  was  already,  in  the   EngUsu 

^  .  colonies. 

Boston  News-Letter  (1704),  superseding  the  old  man- 
uscript methods  of  communicating  intelligence  from  one  govern- 
ment to  another.  The  war  was  likely  also  to  furnish  common 
opportunities  of  defying  the  parliamentary  navigation  laws.  It 
was  the  chance  to  teach  the  colonists  the  advantage  of  making 
their  own  woolens,  and  thus  to  emancipate  them  from  the 
domination  of  the  British  merchant. 

It  meant  still  more.  Robert  Livingston  of  New  York  looked  "" 
forward  to  the  time  when,  if  supineness  were  allowed,  the  French, 
"  by  forts  and  settlements  in  the  heart  of  the  country  and  keep- 
ing a  constant  correspondence  and  communication  with  Misse- 
sepie,"  woidd  be  able  "  to  make  daily  incursions  upon  our  plan- 
tations.'' The  remedy,  to  his  mind,  was  some  scheme  of  inter- 
colonial confederation.     Livingston's  views  were  not  ^     ^ 

*=  Combury 

without  supporters  in  Cornbury,  the  local  governor,  and 
and  to  some  extent  in  a  certain  royal  emissary,  Colo- 
nel Quarry.  The  chief  anxiety,  however,  of  this  attentive 
observer  was  lest  the  colonists,  in  cementing  themselves  to- 
gether by  common  aims,  should  dare  to  arrogate  to  themselves 
the  prerogatives  of  Parliament.  He  was  pretty  sure  this  was 
the  tendency  in  the  Virginia  Assembly.  Quarry,  nevertheless, 
was  not  blinded  to  the  treacherous  nature  of  an  Iroquois  alli- 
ance. "  They  are  a  very  uncertain  people  to  trust  to,  and  do 
lie  under  very  strong  temptation  from  the  French,"  he  said. 
His  remedy  in  the  case  was  to  drive  the  French  from  Canada, 
and  he  did  not  think  the  effort  one  of  insuperable  difficulties. 
It  woidd  bring  to  the  English,  he  said,  "  the  whole  trade  of  the 
main,  which  will  be  of  vast  consequence."  He  little  thought 
that  the  project  would  take  sixty  years.  y 

While  Cornbury  and  the  New  Yorkers  were  thus  dreaming 
of  success  and  laying  plots,  Vaudreuil  kept  his  trusty  lieuten- 


TO  THROUGHOUT   THE   VALLEY. 

ants  among-  the  Iroquois  to  watch  the  intrigues  of  the  English. 

The  Lords  of  Trade  had  been  for  some  time  urging  Queen  Anne 

to  send  Protestant  missionaries  among  these  confeder- 

The  Iroquois  r-       •  •  i         t         • 

and  the          ates,  as  the  best  means  oi  cn-cum venting  the  Jesuits 

missions.  .  .  p,ir>ii  t-»i  ?•• 

now  in  possession  oi  the  lield.  Kobert  Livingston  at 
the  same  time  complained  that  "  the  Jesuit  priests  by  their  insin- 
uations and  false  pretenses  were  decoying  a  great  many  of  our 
Indians,  and  have  raised  a  great  faction  in  their  castles  [pali- 
saded villages],  and  it  is  feared  a  great  many  more  will  follow 
imless  they  have  ministers  to  instruct  them  in  the  Christian 
faith,  of  which  they  seem  very  fond."  He  adds  that  French 
emissaries  were  among  them  "  all  last  winter,  endeavoring  to 
corrupt  their  affections  from  the  English,  and  make  ill  impres- 
sions in  their  minds,  to  the  apparent  prejudice  of  our  trade 
with  them,  which  decays  daily  more  and  more." 

While  the  Iroquois  were  uncertain,  it  was  the  Canadian  policy 
to  spare  the  New  York  frontiers ;  but  there  was  no  hesitancy  in 
harrying  the  borders  of  New  England,  and  the  story  of  Deer- 
field  and  the  ravages  of  the  coast  attest  their  ghastly  success. 
^  The  Senecas,  the  most  westerly  of  the  confederates,  soon 
The  west-  patclicd  up  a  pcace  with  the  Miamis,  and  to  keep  these 
ern  Indians.  ^^^  ^^^  morc  distant  Hurous  and  Ottawas  in  subjec- 
tion, Vaudreuil  continued  to  dispatch  to  them  his  quieting  mes- 
sages. These  "  speeches,"  nevertheless,  had  only  partial  effect. 
The  English  influence  was  not  quelled,  and  the  rival  suits,  as 
urged  by  the  emissaries  from  Albany  and  Quebec,  only  divided 
the  Miamis.  Those  who  favored  the  English  soon  drove  away 
a  colony  which  Juchereau  of  Montreal  had  settled  near  the  site 
of  the  modern  Cairo  in  Illinois.  It  had  been  the  purpose  of 
this  pioneer  to  open  thereabouts  mines  of  copper  and  lead,  and 
to  establish  a  barrier  against  any  adventurous  English  daring  to 
pass  that  way. 

It  was  the  determined  policy  of  the  Canadian  government  to 
Juchereau '8  withdraw  f rom  the  distant  west  such  posts  as  interfered 
colonies.  ^ff{i\x  the  bringing  of  furs  to  the  market  farther  down 
the  St.  Lawrence  valley,  and  it  was  equally  a  satisfaction  to  the 
royal  government  to  suppress  any  manufactures  which  in- 
fringed the  monopoly  of  the  home  producers.  Juchereau's  pro- 
ceedings were  hardly  in  harmony  with  such  principles,  for  he 
not  only  was  gathering  skins,  but  had  established  a  tannery  to 


THE  MIAMI   TRADE.  71 

turn  them  into  leather.  The  irruption  upon  him,  therefore,  of 
the  English  faction  among  the  Miamis  was  not  altogether  the 
sacrifice  of  French  interests  which  it  seemed.  The  English 
sympathizers  among  these  Indians  did  not  accomplish  all  that 
Governor  Cornbury  had  wished,  for  they  failed  to  carry  the 
tribe  as  a  whole  over  to  the  English  side. 

Vaudreuil,  though  he  managed  the  Indian  interests  skill- 
fully, did  not  hesitate  to  use  coercion  with  any  recalci- 

•^  XT  T  1  1  •         /v  •   1       Vaudreuil 

trant  tnbe.    JNor  did  his  eiiorts  to  square  accounts  with  and  New 
the  English  lead  him  beyond  a  courteous  and  seeming 
willingness  to  negotiate  a  peace  with  Dudley  of  Massachusetts. 
These  interchanges  of    diplomatic    suavities    were    protracted 
through  many  months,  and  in  1708,  when  nothing  had  come  of 
them,  the  New  England  frontiers  were  again  ravaged. 

Once  again  aroused,  the  English  compelled  the  entire  Iro- 
quois confederacy,  except  the  Senecas,  to  rise  against  the  French, 
and  the  Jesuits  were  at  last  expelled  from  their  country  (1708), 
never  to  return. 

The  English  emissaries  now  pushed  beyond  the  Iroquois  coun- 
try, and  the  Miamis  were  induced  to  send  some  chiefs  to  Albany 
and  enter  into  a  pact  for  trade.  Five  years  of  strenuous  efforts 
for  this  object  were  thus  crowned  at  last  with  success,  ^rade  with 
and  Cornbury,  in  congratulating  himself,  gave  a  young  *^"^  Miamis. 
halfbreed,  Montour,  much  of  the  credit  for  it.  The  French 
showed  quite  as  much  evidence  of  their  belief  in  his  agency  by 
compassing  his  destruction  the  next  year.  This  traffic  with  the 
Miamis  was  the  formal  beginning  of  a  reorganized  English 
trade  in  the  northeastern  parts  of  the  Great  Valley ;  but  it  was 
destined  to  be  maintained  with  difficulty  against  the  incessant 
plottings  of  the  French. 

Samuel  Vetch,  an  active  man,  who  had  been  much  on  the  St. 
Lawrence,  picking  up  information  to  be  useful  in  case 

Vetch  and 

of  an  attack  on  Quebec,  was  shortly  after  (1708)  Quebec. 
in  England,  urging  such  an  incursion.  His  pleas 
were  reinforced  by  Cornbury's  representations,  and  Quarry 
warned  the  government  that  to  delay  the  movement  would  very 
likely  make  it  too  late.  The  victories  of  Marlborough  dis- 
posed the  public  to  the  undertaking.  The  rumors  of  the  inten- 
tion which  reached  Quebec  induced  the  Canadians  to  concen- 
trate their  forces,  and  this  had  much  to  do  with  their  with- 
drawal from  the  Iroquois  country,  as  already  related. 


72  THROUGHOUT   THE    VALLEY. 

England,  as  it  turned  out,  found  enough  to  do  in  Portugal, 
and  the  troops  which  were  promised  did  not  come  over.  The 
colonial  forces  lacking  this  support,  the  campaign  of  which  so 
much  was  expected  proved  a  failure,  and  the  Boston  government 
did  not  hesitate  to  believe  that  the  apathy  of  New  York  arose 
from  this  desire  to  preserve  the  Canadian  trade. 

In  view  of  such  a  fiasco,  Jeremy  Dummer's  ambitious  argu- 
ment, that  even  Canada  of  right  belonged  to  the  British  crown, 
seemed  all  the  more  ridiculous,  and  served  rather  to  outrage  the 
French  than  to  mollify  the  disappointment  of  New  England. 
'^  Better  than  such  pretense  and  the   treaty  of  1701  was  the 
sturdy  influence  of  the  German  Palatines,  now  begun 
to  be  felt  along  the  Mohawk,  and  still  more  to  be 
felt  when,  later    on,  they  constituted  the  advance-guard  of  the 
Teutonic  race  in  pushing  towards  the  headwaters  of  the  Alle- 
ghany and  Mononffahela.      There  was  at   the    same 

Swiss.  . 

time  a  movement  of  the  Swiss  to  purchase  lands 
"beyond  the  Potomac  and  in  Virginia,"  where  it  was  supposed 
there  were  mines. 

We  have  seen  that  Livingston,  in  1699,  had  been  urging 
Cadillac  Govcmor  Bellomout  to  seize  upon  the  straits  at  De- 
De*troit.  troit,  as  the  fittest  place  from  which  to  control  trade 
^^*^^-  with  the  western  Indians.     The  advantages  of    tliis 

post  had  been  equally  apparent  to  Lomothe  Cadillac,  and  he 
had  the  spirit  to  anticipate  the  English. 

Cadillac  was  a  Catholic  of  Franciscan  associations,  who 
hated  the  Jesuits  now  and  in  the  times  to  come,  and  he  looked 
with  a  sinister  eye  upon  their  mission  at  Mackinac.  A  Jesuit 
was  assigned  to  found  a  mission  at  the  new  post ;  but  Cadillac 
chose  a  Recollect  for  his  chaplain.  It  was  thirty  years  since 
St.  Lusson,  with  ambitious  parade,  had  formally  attached  to  the 
French  crown  all  this  upper  region  of  the  Lakes.  The  first  civil 
and  military  government  was  now  to  be  established  in  this  great 
domain. 

In  June,  1701,  Cadillac  left  Three  Rivers  with  a  hundred 
soldiers  and  colonists  in  twenty-five  canoes.  He  took  the  Ot- 
tawa route  to  hide  his  movements  from  the  Iroquois.  By  July 
24,  the  expedition  was  at  the  straits,  and  at  the  end  of  August 
his  stockade  was  completed  and  named  Fort  Pontchartrain. 

The  movement  raised  up  enemies  hard  to  conciliate.     The 


VAUDREUIL.  73 

Jesuits  never  liked  to  have  settlements  near  their  missionary- 
fields.  The  traders  found  a  diminution  of  jjrofits,  if  stores  of 
merchandise  were  made  too  accessible  to  the  savage.  The  oppo- 
sition of  the  Canadian  packmen  before  long  inured  to  the  ben- 
efit not  only  of  the  English  on  the  Atlantic,  but  of  the  French 
in  Louisiana,  for  it  prompted  one  Jean  Pacaud  to  lease  for 
seventy  thousand  francs  a  year  the  privileges  of  the  old  Com- 
paanie  des  Indes,  out  of  which  was  org-anized  speedily 
a  new  Compagnie  du  Canada,  under  a  concession  of   d"  Canada. 

^     °  1701. 

October  31,  1701.    The  new  company  thus  secured  the 
exclusive  trade  at  Frontenac  and  Detroit,  the  latter  post  deriv- 
ing no  advantage  except  that  the  company  set  up  the  estab- 
lishment there  and  the  king  maintained  the  garrison. 

Cadillac  did  not  hear  of  this  project  till  the  following  July  \ 
(1702).  He  protested,  and  got  some  modification  of  the  com- 
pany's power.  He  even  importuned  Pontchartrain  for  the  abol- 
ishment of  the  company  and  a  separate  government  for  Detroit. 
The  organization  still  had  enough  of  prescriptive  rights  to  in- 
cense the  old  traders.  This  class  would  not  have  been  averse 
to  bring  on  an  Iroquois  war,  if  Detroit  was  to  disappear  in  the 
conflict.  In  this  they  were  at  one  with  the  English  at  Albany, 
and  it  is  sometimes  alleged  that  a  fire  in  the  Detroit  stockade 
was  a  consequence  of  English  influence. 

A  natural  result  followed.  An  illicit  traffic  in  peltries  sprung 
up,  and  the  French  down  the  Mississippi  and  the  English  at 
Albany  were  soon  profiting  more  than  the  company.  Cadillac 
was  hampered  ;  but  the  company  was  more  so. 

Callieres  died,  and  political  power  in  Canada  passed  into  the 
hands  of  Vaudreuil,  who  was  so  connected  by  ties  of  vaudreuii 
blood  with  some  of  the  directors  of  the  new  company  governor. 
that  the  prospect,  in  Cadillac's  eyes,  grew  gloomier  still.  The 
end,  however,  was  nearer  than  he  thought,  and  Pontchartrain 
jjroved  powerful  enough  to  displace  the  company.  That  minis- 
ter, in  June,  1704,  wrote  from  Versailles,  placing  Cadillac  in 
power,  and  gave  him  some  good  advice  to  j^onder  over. 

The  Jesuits  were  still  a  thorn.     Cadillac  wrote  to  Pontchar- 
train that  the  only  way  to  keep  peace  with  them  was  cadiiiac  in 
to  do  their  bidding  and  hold  his  tongue.     If  relations   p""""- 
in  this  way  were  jarring,  it  was  hopeful  to  find  the  western 
tribes  becoming  amenable  to  French  influence  to  such  a  degree 


74  THROUGHOUT   THE    VALLEY. 

that  they  were  flocking  to  settle  along  the  straits.  Cadillac  had 
need  of  their  attachment  before  long ;  and  they  served  him  well 
Hostile  i^  repelling  an  attack  of  the  Sauks  and  Foxes.  The 
tribes.  hostility  of  tlicsc  warlike  allies  was  and  remained  a 

serious  impediment  to  the  success  of  the  French  about  the  upper 
reaches  of  the  Mississippi,  and  we  have  already  noted  how  Le 
Sueur's  followers  on  a  branch  of  the  Minnesota  were  di-iveu 
away  by  the  Sioux,  ever  a  treacherous  foe. 

The  years  that  ensued  under  Cadillac's  rule  at  Detroit  were 
passed  in  continuous  efforts  to  keep  peace,  with  the  Ottawas  on 
the  one  hand,  and  with  the  Miamis  on  the  other,  who  were  always 
watching  for  opportunities  to  strike  a  blow.  Detroit  failed  in 
the  competition  with  Mackinac  as  a  mart  for  furs,  and  the  Eng- 
lish for  the  most  part  got  the  advantage  with  cheaper  goods 
and  better  offers  of  skins.  The  Albany  traders  were  quite  con- 
tent with  profits  that  were  not  lessened  by  the  cost  of  maintain- 
ing the  posts. 

The  Bay  of  St.  Louis  or  St.  Bernard,  on  the  Texan  shore,  is 
well  round  the  northwestern  curve  of  the  Mexican  Gulf, 
and  towards  the  south.    It  is  the  spot  where  La  Salle 
had  sought  to  found  his  colony.     His  belief  that  he  was  near  a 
western  outlet  of  the  Mississippi  influenced  the  views  of  Minet, 
jtg  his  engineer,  in  delineating  the  southern  bends  of  the 

cartography.  Qj-gat  Rivcr,  and  gave  Franquelin  the  incentive  to 
make  a  false  course  for  its  lower  current.  Even  so  late  as  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  we  find  a  survival  of  La  Salle's 
mistake  in  the  Enrjlisli  Pilot  (1794),  of  Mount  and  Page.  It 
was  left  for  Delisle,  opportimely  coming  forward  and  proving 
himself  the  real  founder  of  modern  geographical  science,  to 
correct  this  misconception,  but  not  wholly  to  eradicate  it  from 
the  stock  notions  of  the  lesser  cartographers.  Indeed,  it  is 
surprising  how  prevalent  the  views  of  half  a  century  before 
remained  with  the  mere  copyists.  The  maps  of  Jaillot,  De 
Witt,  Schenck,  AUard,  and  Danckerts  continued  for  ten  years 
after  the  new  developments  under  IberviUe  to  present  the  views 
of  Sanson  of  fifty  years  aback.  Their  maps  pertinaciously  rep- 
resented incomplete  outlines  of  Lakes  Michigan  and  Superior, 
unmindful  of  the  explorations  of  La  Salle  and  the  Jesuits.  All 
that  stood  for  the  principal  affluent  of  the  Mexican  Gulf  on  its 


BITES  FROM  PENSACOLA   TO  THE  MOUTHS   OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.     [After  DeUsle.] 
[It  shows  the  site  of  the  old  fort  on  the  Mississippi,  abandoned  for  the  new  one  at  Mobile.] 


76  THROUGHOUT   THE    VALLEY. 

northern  shore  was  a  looped  bay  with  a  few  short  coast  streams 
flowing  into  it. 

The  general  southern  direction  of  the  great  current  as  Joliet 
Maps  of  the  reported  it  in  1673  was  accepted  by  Hennepin  in  the 
Mississippi,  dotted  line  of  his  honest  and  early  map,  but  in  his 
later  dubious  draft,  disregarding  the  surve^'^s  of  Iberville,  if  he 
knew  them,  Heunepin  swung  over  to  the  views  of  Franquelin, 
and  had  been  preceded  in  doing  so  by  the  Englishman,  Edward 
Wells,  in  his  maps.  Another  error  of  a  still  earlier  day,  and 
going  back  to  the  remoter  Spanish  explorations,  had  caused  a 
confusion  between  the  Bay  of  Mobile  and  the  indentation  of  the 
Gulf  shore,  of  which  the  Mississippi  Sound  of  our  day  makes 
Espiritu  ^  part.  The  name  Espiritu  Santo,  applied  in  the 
Santo.  early  days  both  to  a  bay  and  a  river,  is  not  always 

easy  to  identify  with  the  modern  geography,  and  we  find  it, 
even  after  the  advent  of  Iberville,  sometimes  made  to  do  duty 
for  one  or  the  other  of  such  half-in  closed  stretches  of  water. 

It  was  a  relic  of  the  original  Spanish  domination  of  the 
northern  shore  of  the  Gulf  that  their  name  of  Florida 
continued  for  some  time  to  apply,  even  with  the 
French  map-makers,  to  the  region  extending  from  the  peninsula 
and  St.  Augustine  to  the  confines  of  Mexico.  Notwithstanding 
the  claims  which  Iberville  made  for  Louisiana  bordering:  here 
on  the  Gulf,  Delisle,  who  aU  the  while  was  working  on  that 
commander's  data,  continued  to  apply  the  name  of  Florida  to 
the  territory  between  Carolina  and  Texas.  It  was  left  for  the 
Belgian  cartographer,  Nicolas  de  Fer,  to  give  the  alternative 
appellation  of  "  Louisiane  ou  Floride." 

There  was  at  this  time,  among  the  French  cartographers,  a 
general   agreement    that    the    national   claims    were 

French  ?  iii  i  ia  ii.  t^t-, 

claims  and  boundcd  ou  the  cast  by  the  Appalachians.  De  Fer 
so  recognizes  the  extent  of  French  jurisdiction  in  his 
maps,  and  was  even  more  liberal  than  Delisle,  who  at  a  later 
day  was  forced  to  reclaim  for  his  king  a  region  along  the  west- 
ern bounds  of  New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  which  he  had  been 
content  in  some  of  his  earlier  maps  to  give  to  the  English. 
Delisle  even  then  did  not  attempt  to  push  the  French  claims 
beyond   the  mountains  into  Carolina;    but,  for  some  reason. 

Note.     A  portion  of  Franquelin's  map  (in  the  Marine,  reproduced  by  Marcel,  No.  40),  whicli 
shows  his  misconceptions,  is  opposite. 


OU      ALAC^VvSO^ 


yj\iuifr>    -^^ 


"N. 


ATK 


LATIONS.^ 


\ 


OuiGcoufrtoo^' 


'■Ou 

DBS  bioux  DE  -^d: 


SSINIBOUELS  V  _ 

O  O^r  -  ^^(L-fTSKITONS 


i^fil^ron  -UT^S  SIO 
Ouicpctoi^JYinqhounatorl 

.Ocatamcuctorf 


e*Oi.idacheourutqn  •      "tp- -^  «»-  -S     i¥>>«dflJato. 


i^atTov  oil 


J,  -     -1         Natio 


1$  "'^•^■au„„. 


NaTI  W^AWX^^/  °^  ^^    Pais  d^^ 

Gatacc^ ?t^;rKipappff   NaTION     Nation 


:.,^ii;*r, 


J'^ 


■^-W  Ilinoi 


uJc^xiJi    .;£/^J^{i'/J^i!/ 


78  THROUGHOUT   THE    VALLEY. 

Schenck,  the  Dutch  map-maker,  in  reissuing  Delisle's  map, 
stretched  Florida  or  Louisiana  far  up  toward  the  modern  Vir- 
ginia. 

It  shows  how  diverse  interpretations  could  be  put  upon  the 
same  reports,  when  Delisle  is  always  correct  in  making  the 
Ohio  and  Wabash  confluent  streams,  while  De  Fer  puts  them 
do^vn  as  parallel  affluents  of  the  Mississippi. 

In    his  map  of  the   upper  Mississippi,    published   in    1703, 

Delisle  profited  by  the  information  collected  by  Duluth,  Perrot, 

and  Le  Sueur.     Through  such  channels  he  obtained  the  stories 

of  Indians  who  professed  to  have  followed  the  Missis- 

Source  of  ,.  ,  ^  -i     ••-,•-,       a  t\       • 

the  Missis-  sippi  to  its  sourcc,  and  placed  it  m  latitude  49°,  m  a 
marshy  region  where  it  was  linked  with  three  small 
lakes,  —  a  configuration  which  was  continued  in  the  maps  well 
down  through  the  century,  and  misled  the  American  negotia- 
tors in  the  treaty  of  1782.  It  was  repeated  by  De  Fer,  though 
some  contemporary  cartographers,  like  the  Dutchman,  Schenck, 
were  pretty  sure  in  all  their  maps  to  carry  the  fountains  of  the 
great  river  as  high  as  54°  or  55°  north  latitude.  They  had 
about  as  little  warrant  for  this  as  the  French  traders  wander- 
ing among  the  Upper  Sioux  had  when  they  detected  Chinese 
soimds  in  the  savage  gutturals. 

There  were  stories  often  repeated  by  adventurous  traders. 
Trade  with  ^^^^  t^Q^  Credited  to  the  Indians,  which  gave  hopes  that 
Spaniards,  -^cst  of  tlic  Mississippi  some  productive  trade  could 
yet  be  opened  with  the  Spaniards  in  New  Mexico,  and  a  way 
be  found  to  a  great  western-flowing  river.  From  the  time  when, 
in  1673,  Marquette  was  inspired  with  the  hope  of  carrying  the 
gospel  westward  by  the  turbid  current  of  the  Missouri,  there 
Missouri  ^^^^  heen  in  many  an  adventurous  breast  a  longing  to 
^'''^'■-  face  its  unknown  dangers.     That  there  was  beyond  a 

divide  somewhere  in  these  temperate  latitudes  a  j)racticable  pas- 
sage westward  was  readily  accepted.  Lugtenberg,  in  1700,  while 
illustrating  his  belief  in  the  peopling  of  the  New  World  by  the 
Lost  Tribes,  had  imagined  a  water-way  from  Lake  Superior 
which  connected  with  the  fabled  Straits  of  Aiiian.  Delisle  had 
placed  a  lake  near  the  Missouri,  from  which  the  "  Meschasipi  ou 
Grande  Riviere  "  flowed  west.  We  know  that  in  1703  a  party 
left  Kaskaskia  to  follow  up  the  Missouri,  but  we  are  ignorant 


[From  La  Potherie's  Histoire  de  V Ameriqne,  Vlll,  showing:  how  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi 
was  misplaced,  forty  years  after  La  Salle  originated  the  error.] 


80  THROUGHOUT   THE    VALLEY. 

of  its  fate.  A  year  later,  some  Canadians  on  that  river  heard 
stories  of  a  western  stream  over  the  upper  divide.  In  1705, 
some  miners  went  up  the  Missouri,  and  built  a  fort  on  an 
island  above  the  confluence  of  the  Osage.  Bienville  soon  after 
heard  stories  of  the  possibility  of  reaching  by  this  route  some 
nations  who  used  horses.  Sometimes  the  stories  referred  to 
white  men ;  and  some  of  Bienville's  officers,  in  1708  and  the 
year  following,  were  planning  an  expedition  to  reach  a  source 
of  the  Missouri  which  was  said  to  be  beyond  the  three  or  four 
hundred  leagues  already  followed  without  encountering  any 
Spaniards.  Somewhere  in  this  upper  region  it  was  believed  that 
the  Spaniards  fomid  copper,  and  there  were  floating  stories  that 
they  carried  the  ore  off  on  pack-mules.  Up  among  the  Sioux 
also  the  traders  understood  the  Indians  to  speak  of  a  westward 
flowins:  river. 

The  most  distinct  of  these  stories  were  f  oimd  in  a  book  which 
Lahontan.  Lahoutau  publislicd  at  The  Hague  in  1703.  This 
^"*^^-  story-teller  claimed  that  some  fifteen  years  before  he 

had  found  a  stream  entering  the  Mississippi  near  Lake  Pepin, 
which  came  from  the  setting  sun.  By  following  its  sluggish 
current  he  had  come  to  a  large  lake,  lying  beneath  the  moun- 
tains, and  beyond  these  highlands  there  were  the  sources  of 
another  river,  which  could  be  followed  to  the  Pacific.  The 
statement  was  specific  and  gained  credence,  and  the  wonders 
of  it  had  doubtless  something  to  do  with  causing  the  multifa- 
rious publication  of  the  book  in  French,  English,  and  German, 
which  was  put  upon  the  market  at  The  Hague,  in  London, 
Hamburg,  Amsterdam,  and  Leipzig,  for  the  next  eight  or  ten 
years.  For  a  while  the  story  prospered,  and  it  gained  a  quali- 
fied assent  from  De  Fer.  Delisle  was  inclined  to  believe  it, 
but  at  a  later  day,  importimed  to  discard  it,  he  yielded  to  the 
arguments  of  Bobe  against  it.  Homann,  in  1706,  puts  this 
"  Riviere  longue  "  on  his  map.  The  English  cartographers, 
Moll  and  Senex,  gave  it  full  play  in  their  maps,  though  Senex 
finally  rejected  it. 

The  impressions  produced  by  what  is  now  known  to  have  been 
a  studied  deceit  were  hard  to  dispel,  and  in  certain  quarters 
the  illusion  did  not  vanish  till  the  century  was  near  its  end. 

Note.  Tlie  opposite  map,  taken  from  the  U.  S.  Topographical  map,  of  the  region  west  of  the 
Mississippi  (1850)  shows  tlie  Mille  Lacs  region  and  the  continuity  of  the  central  trough  of  North 
America  through  the  upper  Mississippi  and  the  Red  River  of  the  North. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

OROZAT   AND  TRADE. 

1710-1719. 

It  had  been  determined  in  Paris  to  place  La  Forest  in  charge 
at  Detroit,  and  to  transfer  Cadillac  to  Louisiana.  On  cadiiiac 
May  13,  1710,  Pontchartrain  notified  the  new  gov-  fou^Jana"^ 
ernor  of  his  appointment.  He  received  the  message  ^^^*^- 
through  Vaudreuil  in  September.  A  man  of  Cadillac's  dispo- 
sition was  neither  happy  nor  at  his  best  under  the  restraints 
which  he  had  felt  at  Detroit.  In  June,  1711,  he  was  ready  for 
his  journey,  and  asked  for  an  escort.  He  was  obliged,  however, 
to  return  to  France,  and  reembark  for  his  new  post,  and  vari- 
ous delays  prevented  his  reaching  it  before  May,  1713.  inLouisi- 
He  had  left  a  discouraging  prospect  at  Detroit,  and  '^"^'  ^^^^' 
the  one  he  found  before  him  on  the  Gulf  was  hardly  less  dis- 
heartening. The  colony  had  been  reduced  by  disease  to  scarcely 
more  than  four  hundred  whites  and  about  twenty  negro  slaves. 
For  two  years  there  had  been  a  succession  of  miseries.  D'Ar- 
taguette,  before  his  return  to  France,  could  do  nothing  but  give 
the  home  government  good  advice  ;  and  it  availed  little.  His 
better  associates  had  died  or  returned  to  Europe.  Food  was 
so  scarce  that  the  men  wandered  off  among  the  Indi-  condition  of 
ans  for  a  livelihood.  The  English  made  an  attack  on  t^e country. 
Daui^hine  Island,  and  the  community  was  in  constant  appre- 
hension of  other  inroads.  They  had  not  infrequent  grounds  to 
fear  that  deserters  disclosed  their  weakness  to  their  enemies. 
The  Choctaws  professed  to  be  friendly,  but  if  the  Chickasaws 
and  their  allies  failed  of  their  purpose  with  these  neighbors  of 
the  French  by  friendly  solicitation,  they  were  always  ready  to 
use  the  tomahawk,  and  they  trusted  to  the  English  leadership 
in  any  event. 

With  all  these  environments  of  danger  and  distress,  it  was 


84 


CROZAT  AND    TRADE. 


not  strange  the  colony  suffered  from  the  loss  of 
members,  who  sought   better  fortune 


The  Illinois 


country.  sv^,^\.  Vinceunes  had  been  founded  on 
Father  Mermet,  and  held  out  lures  for  settlers, 
in  these  upper  regions  were  beginning  to  thrive, 
were  increasing  about  them.     There  was  one  at 


some  of  its  best 
up  the  Missis- 
the  Wabash  by 
The  missions 
and  habitations 
St.  Joseph's  for 


niinois 
tribes. 


FRENCH   SOLDIERS,   1710. 

the  Miamis  and  Pottawattamies.  Another  was  at  Peoria  ;  but 
the  most  successful  was  among  the  Kaskaskias,  at  their  new 
settlement  near  the  Mississippi.  The  effect  of  this  priestly 
influence  had  become  perceptible  among  the  Illinois 
Indians,  and  they  had  grown  far  less  barbarous  than 
any  other  tribe.  They  used  ploughs,  and  in  other  practices 
were  assuming  habits  of  civilization.  The  Jesuits  taught  them 
the  use  of  windmills,  and  the  Kaskaskias,  one  of  the  Illinois 
tribes,  constructed  treadmills,  and  ran  them  by  horses.  They 
obtained  these  animals  by  inter-tribal  exchanges  from  a  stock 
reared  among  the  distant  Spaniards  of  New  Mexico.     The  little 


CADILLAC  AND   CROZAT.  85 

settlement  at  Kaskaskia  quickly  took  on  an  air  of  permanence, 
and  we  very  soon  find  that  they  were  adopting  permanent  land 
records. 

All   these  amenities   of   life  were   in  sorry  contrast  to  the 
absence  of  them  near  the  Giilf,  and  in  D'Artaouette's 

Louisiana. 

day  that  commander  had  urged  a  military  post  on 
the  Ohio,  to  confront  any  advance  upon  Louisiana  by  the  Eng- 
lish, who  might  be  tempted  to  take  advantage  of  their  weak- 
ness. The  conditions  were  not  changed  now  that  Cadillac  held 
the  reins.  His  petulancy  and  imperiousness  were  to  prove  ill 
calculated  to  atone  for  the  defects  of  his  people  and  the  sorrows 
of  their  life. 

When,  in  May,  1713,  La  Jonquiere  in  a  fifty-gun  ship  star- 
tled Mobile  with  his  booming  cannon,  there  was  much 
beside  the  new  governor,  whom  he   had  brought,  to  arrives. 

1713. 

throw  the  poor  colony  into  a  condition  of  expecta- 
tion. There  was  a  new  invoice  of  marriageable  damsels  for 
one  thing.  There  were  also  the  tidings  of  the  peace,  settled 
at  Utrecht.  There  was  the  promise  of  a  fresh  policy  of  trade 
for  the  colony,  by  virtue  of  a  contract  signed  at  Paris,  on  the 
14th  of  the  previous  September. 

This  instrument  gave  to  the  Sieur  Antoine  Crozat  the  right  to 
farm  the  trade  of  Louisiana  for  fifteen  years.     In  the 

icn-  1  -ici  r^  i       Crozat  and 

month   following   the    arrival  of    the  news,   Crozat  s  his  plans. 

°  .  1714. 

agents  came  to  carry  out  the  undertaking.  The  ter- 
ritory defined  by  the  document  as  the  field  of  Crozat's  opera- 
tions gave-  the  French  claim  to  the  limits  of  Louisiana,  and  is 
a  starting-point  for  the  pretensions  of  the  French  in  Lj^j^g  ^^ 
this  regard.  It  is  described  as  including  all  the  ter-  ^^o^isiana. 
ritory  between  Carolina  and  New  Mexico,  while  at  the  same 
time  it  extended  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  Illinois.  Its 
area  towards  the  east  included  the  basin  of  what  was  called  the 
Wabash  or  the  St.  Jerome,  that  is,  the  modern  Ohio ;  and 
towards  the  west  it  went  up  the  St.  Pierre  or  the  Missouri.  It 
made  no  claim  to  go  beyond  the  sources  of  that  river,  though 
there  has  sometimes  been  a  doubt  if  France,  in  ceding  Louisi- 
ana in  1803  to  the  United  States,  did  not  touch  the  Pacific  be- 
tween the  bounds  of  England  on  the  north  and  Spain  on  the 
south.  Thus  Louisiana,  as  mapped  at  this  time,  took  the  entire 
water-shed  of  the  Mississippi,  except  between  the  Illinois  and 


86  CROZAT  AND   TRADE. 

the  sources  of  the  Great  River  on  its  eastern  side.  At  the 
south  it  also  inckided  the  valleys  of  the  coast  streams  which 
flowed  into  the  Gulf,  but  it  respected  the  rights  of  the  Spaniards 
in  the  southwest,  though  it  was  sometimes  claimed  that  the 
French  territorial  rights  on  a  more  northern  parallel  stretched 
to  the  Gulf  of  California. 

There  was  a  disposition,  moreover,  on  the  part  of  the  French 
government  at  this  time  not  to  be  too  definite  in  their  descrip- 
tions of  limits.  A  year  or  two  later  (January,  1715),  Baudot, 
in  charge  under  Pontchartrain  of  the  colonies,  requested  Delisle 
to  remove  the  dots  from  his  map  which  marked  the  limits  of 
Louisiana,  "  as  the  court  wishes  it  left  indefinite,  and  does  not 
want  French  maps  to  be  quoted  by  foreign  nations  against  us." 
Delisle  generally  marked  the  limits  of  Canada  by  the  divide 
which  bounded  the  St.  Lawrence  basin  on  the  south,  and  drew 
those  of  Louisiana  by  the  mountains  which  on  the  east  confined 
the  streams  feeding  the  Mississippi.  There  is  hardly  exact  cor- 
respondence in  these  respects  among  any  of  the  contemporary 
maps  delineating  the  interior  of  North  America. 

Crozat  had  in  antecedent  years  been  very  helpful  to  the 
crozat's  Frcuch  king  in  replenishing  his  treasury  with  gold 
rights.  ^j^jj  silver,  and  that  sovereign  hoped  his  subject's  pros- 

perous ways  might  inure  to  the  benefit  of  his  American  prov- 
ince. He  was  willing  accordingly  to  give  him  manifold  advan- 
tages. He  allowed  him  to  open  mines,  with  a  due  reservation 
of  the  crown's  share  ;  but  he  was  compelled  to  recruit  the  colo- 
nists, and  to  send  two  ships  with  supplies  every  year.  He  was 
permitted,  also,  to  send  a  single  ship  each  twelvemonth  to  the 
coast  of  Guinea  for  negroes.  Further,  the  charter  provided 
that  French  law  and  customs  should  prevail  in  the  province, 
"  with  the  usages  of  the  mayoralty  and  shrievalty  of  Paris." 

Ci'ozat's  agents  at  once  began  to  establish  posts  upon  all  the 
The  country  principal  rivcrs,  and  explorers  were  sent  out  to  search 
explored.  £qj.  miucs.  Lead  ore  was  found  in  southeastern  Mis- 
souri, and  the  miners  got  their  supplies  from  the  Illinois  coun- 
try, where  a  trading-post  was  set  up.  Another  station  was 
placed  at  the  modern  Natchez,  and  De  La  Tour  was  sent  four 
hundred  miles  up  the  Alabama  River  at  the  junction  of  the 
Coosa  and  Tallapoosa,  to  build  a  stockade,  which  was  named 
Fort  Toulouse.     Some  of    Crozat's  traders    penetrated  to  the 


TREATY   OF  UTRECHT.  87 

Tennessee  country,  and  built  (1714)  among  the  Sliawnees  a 
storehouse  on  a  mound  near  where  the  modern  Nashville 
stands.  An  old  deserted  stockade  of  the  Indians,  close  by,  was 
occupied  as  a  dwelling. 

Deerskins  and  other  peltries  in  large  quantities  were  soon  go- 
ing down  the  Mississippi.  With  no  competitors  in  the  colony, 
Crozat  counted  on  large  profits.  His  aims,  however,  were  soon 
thwarted.  The  traders  got  better  prices  from  the  English  and 
Spanish,  and  the  skins  found  their  way  to  Carolina  and  Pen- 
sacola.  Crozat  was  soon  complaining  that  the  English  were 
seducing  the  natives  from  the  French  interests  both  on  the  Red 
River  and  on  the  upper  Mississippi.  To  add  to  his  disappoint- 
ments, the  Spaniards,  playing  into  the  hands  of  the  English, 
warned  Crozat' s  ships  away  from  their  Gulf  ports,  and  the  de- 
mand in  that  direction  for  his  skins  was  cut  off.  A  grinding 
monoj)oly  could  but  create  discontent  in  the  province.  Before 
Crozat's  plans  were  fairly  organized,  the  operations  of  the 
treaty  which  had  iust  broug-ht  peace  debarred  him 
from  the  importation  of  Airicans.  Its  provisions  had, 
in  fact,  transferred  the  control  of  the  slave  trade  to  England,  a 
plan  far-reaching  enough  to  make  the  mother  country  responsi- 
ble for  the  long  bondage  of  the  negro  in  America. 

The  treaty  of  Utrecht,  after  a  truce  which  Bolingbroke  had 
made,    and  which  the  victories  of   Marlborough  had 

.  Treaty  of 

induced,  was  signed  March  31  (April  11),  1713.  utrecht. 
France  did  not  by  it  yield  all  that  four  years  earlier  she 
might  have  been  compelled  to  grant.  At  that  time  the  English, 
who  by  the  treaty  had  permission  for  a  yearly  ship  to  trade  with 
the  Spanish  colonies,  might  very  likely  have  enforced  free 
trade.  The  South  Sea  Company  might  doubtless  have  secured  a 
monopoly  of  the  Spanish  trade  in  America.  Though  the  treaty 
when  actually  negotiated  failed  in  this,  it  gave  England  enough 
to  make  her  at  once  the  first  power  in  Eurojie,  —  a  place  which 
France  had  held  for  nearly  fifty  years.  The  Pretender  was 
forced  out  of  France,  and  the  Protestant  succession  in  England 
was  recognized.  The  English  king  became  sovereign  of  New- 
foimdland  and  Acadia.  In  gaining  these  provinces,  the  British 
negotiators  were  not  as  wary  as  they  should  have  been,  since 
they  fixed  the  bounds  of  Acadia  by  its  "  ancient  limits,"  which 


88  CROZAT  AND   TRADE. 

had  all  the  vagueness  that  France  delighted  in,  when  she  found 
occasion  to  define  her  own  boundaries.  Nor  did  it  prove  wise 
to  leave  Cape  Breton  in  the  hands  of  the  French.  The  ques- 
tions involved  were  indeed  difficult  and  awkward,  but  perhaj)s 
less  so  than  the  contention  which  ensued. 

Previous  to  this  the  French  would  hardly  have  admitted  that 
Bounds  of  *^^®  northern  bounds  of  Canada  —  stiU  theirs  by  the 
Canada.  treaty,  and  with  a  population  not  much  over  eighteen 
thousand  —  stopped  short  of  the  north  pole.  Now  the  Hud- 
son Bay  Company  and  the  British  government  got  the  larger 
part  of  the  basin  of  that  inland  sea.  There  was  at  last  a  defi- 
nite line,  where  the  French  had  studiously  avoided  having  one. 
It  ran  west  from  the  Labrador  coast  on  latitude  58°  30',  but 
from  Lake  Mistassin  it  struck  49°,  and  so  continued  westward, 
—  the  origin  of  the  line  which  forms  the  present  boundary  of 
the  United  States  on  the  north  along  the  westerly  half  of  its 
extent. 

On  August  18,  1713,  Governor  Hunter  proclaimed  the  peace 
at  New  York,  and  on  September  20  he  communicated 
and  the  it  by  mcsscnger  to  the  assembled  confederates  at 
Onondaga.  He  warned  them  not  to  intercept  the  far 
nations  of  the  Mississippi  and  the  Lakes,  coming  to  trade  at 
Albany.  The  Indians  on  their  part  implored  forgiveness  for 
the  Tuscaroras,  who  had  been  driven  north  by  the  Carolinians, 
and  had  now  become  a  sixth  nation  in  the  Iroquois  Confederacy. 

In  the  struggle  of  the  French  and  English  for  the  Missis- 
sippi valley,  the  language  of  the  treaty  of  Utrecht  respecting 
the  Iroquois  was  by  interpretation  made  of  large  importance  in 
the  future.  The  contracting  nations  agreed  to  respect  the 
country  of  the  tribes  allied  to  each,  and  the  Iroquois  were  taken 
under  the  protection  of  England.  It  soon  became  evident  that 
the  English  intended  to  assume  a  protectorate  over  all  the 
territory  which  the  Iroquois  claimed  to  have  sub- 
subdued  by     dued.     This  included  the  country  Ivina:  beyond  the 

thelroquois.       .  ,,       ,  -P,,  ...  i  •    i        i         t  •       i       i    i 

Alleghany  Kiver,  witlnn  which  the  Iroquois  had  de- 
stroyed the  Eries,  and  from  which  they  had  driven  other  tribes, 
and  which  in  the  English  interpretation  stretched  to  the  line  of 
the  Mississippi  and  Illinois  rivers.  The  earliest  delineation  of 
such  a  line  we  find  at  a  later  period,  and  after  the  English  and 
French  had  made  preparations  for  the  great  struggle.     The 


[From  Humphreys  and  Abbot's  Basins  of  the  Mississippi,  etc.,  War  Department,  18G1.  It  shows 
the  Red  River  basin  and  its  connection  with  the  Texas  rivers  on  the  south,  and  the  Canadian  and 
Kansas  rivers  on  the  north.] 


90  CROZAT  AND    TRADE. 

record  as  it  stands,  for  instance,  on  Evans's  map  (1755)  is 
accompanied  by  a  legend  :  "  The  author  has  been  something 
particular  in  representing  the  extent  of  the  country  of  the  con- 
federates, because  whatever  is  such  is  expressly  conceded  to  the 
English  by  treaty  with  the  French."  The  extent  of  this  claim 
would  bring  the  Illinois  tribes  under  English  jurisdiction,  while 
Theniinois  ^^  reality  the  French  were  seated  among  them  and 
and  Foxes.  \^qI^  their  Sympathies.  On  the  other  hand,  it  left  the 
Foxes,  or  such  portion  of  them  as  were  in  Wisconsin,  within 
the  French  dominion,  while  they  in  reality  were  allies  of  the 
Iroquois,  and  consequently  friends  of  the  English,  with  whom 
they  would  trade  but  for  the  vexatious  interposition  of  the  ubi- 
quitous French. 

The  Foxes,  with  all  the  appliances  of  savage  knavery,  had 
not  long  before  (1712)  been  forced  into  an  attack  on  Detroit. 
The  French  had  in  turn  repelled  the  assault  by  the  aid  of  the 
Hurons  and  Ottawas,  when  Du  Boisson,  with  his  sturdy  little 
garrison  of  twenty  men,  secured  a  victory.  But  neither  the 
French  nor  the  Foxes  forgot  the  event,  and  the  Iroquois  were 
held  responsible  for  inciting  the  attack.  Charlevoix,  in  com- 
paring the  Foxes  to  the  Iroquois,  speaks  of  them  as  just  "  as 
brave,  less  politic,  much  fiercer,  and  the  French  have  never 
been  able  to  tame  or  subdue  them." 

It  was  one  of  Crozat's  objects  to  open  trade  with  the  Span- 
iards in  New  Mexico  by  an  overland  westward  route. 
River  The   French   government,  as  we   have   seen,  had  not 

couii  ry.  ]^ggj-j  over-solicitous  about  defining  very  exactly  the 
limits  of  Louisiana  in  this  direction.  They  preferred  a  vague 
claim,  resting  upon  the  acquaintance  which  La  Salle  had  ac- 
quired with  the  country.  This  explorer  had,  in  1686,  when 
among  the  Cenis,  cut  the  royal  arms  upon  a  large  tree,  in  token 
of  possession.  St.  Denis,  moreover,  had  for  the  last  twelve  years 
been  making  explorations  along  the  valley  of  the  Red  River, 
but  without  great  success.  Father  de  Limoges,  as  early  as 
1702,  had  established  a  mission  among  the  river  tribes.  Squads 
of  Canadians  were  known  to  have  wandered  towards  New  Mex- 
ico in  the  hope  of  finding  mines. 

When  the  Crozat  ride  began,  it  had  been  reported  at  Mobile 
that  the  Arkansas  River  had  been  followed  to  its  source  ;  but 


[Broutin's  Carte  des  Natchitoches,  1722,  as 


'•^^^^, 


reproduced   in  Thomassy's  Geologic  pratique     i^s«    («^'*«' j*"**")^^^/ 

(/e  ia  Louisiane.!  W^^^'  .'Vv  ^r  ,  '.'c^/' 

r     ■  ft?  rf»  J* .  '  '    <*  '''^'  /' 
►  ■'■(<>  A,  i*-/r,''.  •   '■  5  /if 


92  CROZAT  AND   TRADE. 

it  was  scarcely  probable  at  that  time.  The  secrets  of  the  west 
were  indeed  still  to  be  probed,  and  Cadillac  was  ready  to  at- 
tempt it.  So  St.  Denis  was  dispatched  up  the  Red 
exploits.  River  to  Natchitoches,  whence  he  struck  across  the 
land  to  the  region  of  the  Cenis.  Here  he  took  for- 
mal possession  of  the  country.  Finding  some  savages  ready  to 
follow  him,  he  pushed  on  towards  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte. 
In  August,  1714,  he  found  welcome  at  the  mission  of  Saint 
Jean-Baptiste,  near  its  banks,  which  had  been  founded  by  the 
Spaniards.  Here  St.  Denis  fell  in  love  with  the  daughter  — 
or,  as  some  accounts  say,  the  niece — of  Raimond,  the  com- 
mander of  a  small  body  of  Spanish  troops,  stationed  there  to 
protect  the  priests.  This  officer  had  already  dispatched  a  mes- 
senger to  headquarters  with  tidings  of  this  French  intruder, 
when  the  love  affair  happened,  and  rendered  the  situation 
rather  embarrassing  for  the  vigilant  Raimond.  After  a  while 
St.  Denis  was  sent  to  the  city  of  Mexico  to  render  an  account 
of  himself.  Here  he  agreed  to  go  back  with  some  missionaries 
to  the  Texan  country,  and  he  faithfully  did  so,  finding  it  a  con- 
venient opportunity  to  seek  Raimond's  post  once  more  and 
marry  his  love.  This  done,  he  made  his  way  to  Mobile,  and 
reported  there  in  August,  1716. 

The  adventure,  if  it  had  accomplished  little  for  Louisiana, 
had  satisfied  the  successful  gallant.  It  had  done  more  for  the 
Spaniards,  for  it  instigated  greater  alertness  to  save  the  Texan 
country  for  his  Catholic  majesty.  The  Spaniards  had,  in  the 
days  of  La  Salle,  set  up  a  claim  that  the  inlet  in  which  he  had 
Baye  de  St.  l^iiilt  liis  f ort,  somctimcs  called  the  Baye  de  St.  Ber- 
La  Harje!"*^  nard  or  St.  Louis,  or  the  Baye  du  Saint  Esprit,  was 
^'^^^-  quite  within  the   Spanish  boimds.     The  question  of 

ownership  was  now  manifestly  to  be  determined  by  actual  oc- 
cupation. The  Spaniards  had  already  placed  a  force  among 
the  Cenis  to  secure  that  position,  and  they  were  only  waiting 
the  coming  of  the  annual  fleet  from  Spain  to  have  an  available 
force  to  send  to  the  bay.  They  hoped  by  its  possession  to  con- 
trol the  Indian  trade  along  the  rivers  which  have  their  outlets 
in  its  waters. 

The  Spaniards  dallied,  and  had  done  nothing  when,  in  Au- 
gust, 1718,  the  directors  of  the  Company  of  the  West  ordered 
that  the  bay  shoidd  be  seized.     This  was  followed  in  November 


HOMANN,   1720  (?). 
[It  shows  the  routes  of  St.  Denis.] 


94  CROZAT  AND   TRADE. 

by  a  royal  order,  wliicli  further  commanded  that  force  should 

be  used  to  retain  possession  if  the  Spaniards  interfered.     Mar- 

gry  gives  a  relation  of  one  Simars  de  Belle-isle,  who  claims  that 

in  1719  he  had  been  shipwrecked  near  the  bay,  and  had  been 

kept  in  captivity  by  the  Indians.     But  such  chance   adventures 

served  little  more  than  to  keep  the  French  claim  in  mind,  till 

in  August,  1721,  La  Harpe  was   sent  with  instructions  from 

Bienville  to  occupy  the  bay.     He  found  the  natives  hostile,  and 

the  difficulties  of  maintaining  a  post  so  far  from  succor  were 

so  great  that,  on  La  Harpe's  report,  Bienville,  in  December, 

announced  that  the  post  had  been  abandoned.     There  were  still 

those,  however,  who  held  that  this  was  the  true  ingress  to  the 

Texan  country,  and  Margry  gives  us  a  document  in  which  Der- 

banne  regrets  that  St.  Bernard's  Bay  had  not  been  the  chief 

port  of  the  province  instead  of  Mobile.     He  claimed  that  the 

Spaniards  had  so  alienated  the  savages  about  the  bay  that  the 

French  could  easily  ally  them  against  their  rivals. 

The  river  approach  to  this  disputed  Texan  territory  was  more 

promisino-.  In  October,  1716,  St.  Denis,  now  in  Mo- 
st. Deuis         ;  °  .  1  •  •  I         1  1 

on  the  Red     bile,  and  tornimg  a  partnership  with  others,  bought  a 

River.  1716.  .  „  ,      p  ^  ,  txt-   i 

large  quantity  oi  goods  from  Crozat  s  stores.  W  ith  a 
train  carrying  these  supplies,  he  made  a  new  move  up  the  Red 
River.  At  Christmas  he  was  among  the  Cenis,  and  found  the 
Spaniards  in  possession.  In  the  spring  of  1717,  he  reached  the 
mission  where  he  had  met  his  Spanish  bride,  and  thence  he 
passed  on  to  the  city  of  Mexico  to  reclaim  some  of  his  goods, 
which  had  been  seized. 

St.  Denis  was  a  man  of  vain  manners  and  heady  temper,  and 
soon  found  himself  in  a  Spanish  prison.  In  December  he  was 
released ;  but  his  tongue  was  too  free  for  his  safety,  and  his 
wife's  friends  helped  him  escape  the  country.  During  the 
next  spring  (1719)  he  found  his  way  to  Isle  Dauphine. 

Meanwhile  Cadillac,  fearing  that  the  Spaniards  would  be 
Natchi-  before  him,  sent  a  force  to  occupy  Natchitoches  is- 
toches.  1717.  i^j^^  ij^  ^i^g  ^^^i   j^-^g^,   (January,  1717).     Cadillac 

felt  it  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to  maintain  this  station,  and 
he  wrote  full  of  gloomy  forebodings  lest  the  Spaniards  should 
force  the  French  back  here.  He  was  equally  apprehensive  that 
Spaniards  *^®  English  On  the  east  would  dislodge  his  interior  set- 
at  Adaes.       tlcmcuts  and  leave  the  French  little  beyond  Isle  Dau- 


THE  RED  RIVER. 


95 


phine.  The  Spaniards,  on  their  part,  had  stoutly  taken  post  at 
Adaes,  and  this  outpost  of  the  Spanish  and  that  of  the  French 
at  Natchitoches  faced  each  other  across  a  broad  interval.  The 
Spanish  government  hoped  to  recruit  their  settlement  from  the 
Canaries ;  but  few  emigrants  came. 


THE  RED   RIVER  REGION. 

[From  Danville's  Louisiane  (Venice).] 

It  was  soon  apparent  that  Natchitoches  was  not  well  situ- 
ated to  allure  the  Spanish  trade,  and  so,  to  picket  the  ^a  Harpe 
country  beyond  and  open  more  direct  communication,  Red  River 
La  Harpe  was  sent  out  with  a  small  force.     He  had  a  «<>"°*ry 
wide  region  to  traverse,  and  the    country  was    infested   with 


96  CROZAT  AND   TRADE. 

hordes  of  hostile  savages,  so  that  the  transportation  of  merchan- 
dise and  treasure  was  dangerous.  La  Harpe  was  armed  with 
a  letter  from  Bienville,  addressed  to  the  Spanish  governor,  in 
which  the  French  commander  declared  it  his  wish  to  live  in 
amity  with  his  Spanish  neighbors.  Early  in  1719,  La  Harpe 
built  Fort  St.  Louis  de  Carlorette,  not  far  from  Natchitoches. 
Thus  securing  a  new  fortified  base,  he  pushed  toward  the  up- 
river  tribes,  hoping  to  make  new  alliances  with  them.  He  had 
heard  of  the  Padoucas,  said  to  be  seated  near  the 
and  Gran  spriugs  of  the  Arkausas,  Red,  and  Colorado  rivers,  and 
he  was  in  hopes  to  reach  their  country.  Just  where 
the  sources  of  the  Colorado  might  lie  was  not  so  certain  as  of 
the  other  rivers,  but  it  seemed  probable  that  the  whole  region, 
assigned  in  common  report  to  the  Padoucas,  was  the  country 
which  the  map-makers  had  long  designated  as  Gran  Quivira. 
Efforts  to  reach  this  country  which  lay  beyond  the  Panis  (Paw- 
nees) were  still  going  on  by  way  of  the  Missouri.  The  English 
geographer,  Herman  Moll,  in  a  map  of  this  time  (1720)  had 
put  a  legend  upon  this  region  to  indicate  that  "  many  wander- 
ins:  nations  of  Indians  are  at  the  head  of  these  rivers,  who  use 
horses  and  trade  with  the  French  and  Spaniards."  There  had 
been  enough  chance  contact  with  this  people  for  La  Harpe  to 
know  them  to  be  powerful,  counting  something  like  two  thou- 
sand horsemen.  The  Spaniards  under  De  Soto  had  first  en- 
countered them,  and  they  were  said  to  adorn  their  persons  with 
gold  and  silver  ornaments,  which,  as  well  as  their  horses,  they 
had  obtained  from  the  Spaniards. 

La  Harpe's  party  went  on  under  great  difficulties.  The  car- 
ries were  swampy  and  infested  with  noxious  animals. 
At  last  he  reached  the  Nassonites,  and  began  a  fort 
among  them,  as  he  had  been  instructed  to  do.  In  June  (1719) 
he  received  from  the  Spanish  governor  a  reply  to  Bienville's 
letter,  which  he  had  dispatched  in  April,  while  among  the 
Cenis.  This  answer  resented  the  French  invasion  of  Spanish 
territory.  La  Harpe,  in  his  rejoinder,  referred  to  the  prior 
occupation  of  Texas  by  La  Salle,  and  the  later  explorations  of 
St.  Denis.  Further,  he  argued  that  there  was  no  question  about 
the  French  rights  to  the  Mississippi  basin,  and  the  Nassonites, 
among  whom  the  French  were  now  sojourning,  were  dwellers  on 
an  affluent  of  the  Great  River. 


THE   EXTREME   WEST. 

[From  a  map  by  Palairet,  improved  by  Delaroche,  after  Danville,  Mitchell,  and  Bellin.  It 
shows  "  Quivira  ;  "  the  "  River  of  the  West ;  "  the  supposed  connection  of  the  Mississippi  and 
Red  River  of  the  North  ;  the  country  of  the  Padoucas,  Panis,  etc.] 


98  CROZAT  AND   TRADE. 

Not  deterred  by  the    Spanish  protests,  La  Harpe,  getting 
some  horses  from  the  Indians,  still  pushed  on,  and 

The  Arkan- 

sas  River.  September  3,  he  found  himself  beside  the  Arkansas 
River.  A  part  of  his  purpose  had  been  to  discover 
the  sources  of  the  Red  and  Arkansas  rivers,  but  in  this  he  had 
failed.  He  learned  that  other  Spanish  settlements  were  higher 
up  the  Arkansas,  and  he  believed  that  both  rivers  rose  some- 
where in  New  Mexico.  With  this  information  or  impression, 
he  began  his  backward  journey. 


mines 
in  Illinois. 
1714-15. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   MISSISSIPPI    BUBBLE. 
1714-1720. 

"  Cadillac  always  says  the  opposite  of  what  he  believes," 
said  Bienville,  who  had  scant  respect  for  his  superior.  The 
governor  found  others  could  practice  the  same  art.  cadiuacand 
Towards  the  end  of  1714,  he  received  from  the  lUi-  f^^^m 
nois  what  was  represented  to  be  ore  from  mines  of 
that  region.  Shortly  afterwards,  Cadillac  was  on  his  way  up  the 
river  to  inspect  the  wonderful  deposits.  It  proved  a  deceit,  and 
the  specimen  of  silver  had  been  carried  there  from  New  Mex- 
ico. After  an  absence  of  nearly  a  year,  Cadillac  returned  to 
Mobile  in  October,  1715. 

Louis  XIV.  had  died  a  few  weeks  before,  and  France  was 
left  with  an  enormous  debt.  There  was  need  of  eighty  xhe  debt  of 
million  livres  to  meet  the  obligations,  and  the  royal  ^'■^"'^®- 
treasury  could  only  command  about  nine  millions.  Mines  or 
something  else  were  needed,  and  the  possibilities  of  Louisiana 
were  soon  to  be  made  the  most  of  by  an  extraordinary  per- 
sonage. 

John  Law  stands  in  European  history  as  the  creator  of  one 
of   the    most   marvelous    crazes    ever    known.      This 
strange  manifestation  was  as  much  a  wonder  to  Law's  and  ws 
contemporaries  as  it  is  to  us.      A  tract  (1720)  pur- 
porting to  emanate  from  an  Englishman  in  the  colonies,  and 
reflecting  upon  the  consequences  of  the  French  occupation  of 
the  Great  Valley,  speaks  of  Law's   success,  before  he  reached 
the  precipice,  as  "  one  of   the  most  prodigious  events  of  any 
age,"  and  sniffs  at  the  skeptics. 

A    Scotchman,  extremely  nimble  of  mind,  but   destitute  of 
sane  principles,  nurtured  a  rake  and  a  gambler,  Law  had  fled- 


100 


THE  MISSISSIPPI  BUBBLE. 


from  London  to  Amsterdam  to  avoid  arrest.  Here  his  quick 
perceptions  seized  on  some  methods  which  he  observed  in  the 
bank  of  Amsterdam  as  affording  such  great  and  possible  de- 
velopments as  are  ever  attractive  to  those  holding  vagabondish 


JOHN  LAW. 
[From  Ife/  Groote  Tafereel,  etc.] 

notions  of  finance.  He  accordingly  laid  before  the  Scottish 
parliament  a  plan  for  alluring  his  countrymen  to  the  glorious 
capabilities  of  paper  money.  The  canny  Scots  were  not  so  easily 
captured,  and  he  fell  back  to  his  old  ways  and  sunk  himself 
once  more  in  dissipation.     His  hour  was  not  yet  come. 


Meanwhile  the  leaders  of  Louisiana,  ignorant  of  what  was 
in  store,  had  enough  to  occupy  their  attention.  The 
flat-headed    Choctaws,  instigated    by    Bienville,  had 


Events  in 
Louisiana. 


THE  FIRST  NATCHEZ    WAR.  101 

pillaged  some  English  traders,  and  brought  them  to  Mobile. 
The  French  at  this  time  had  become  particularly  anxious  over 
the  increase  of  the  English  trade,  and  had  been  much  alarmed 
with  reports  of  what  Young  and  other  English  emissaries  were 
doing  along  the  Mississippi  banks  to  gain  the  sympathy  of  the 
natives.  The  action  of  the  Choctaws  was  simply  an  effort  to 
show  their  steadfastness  to  the  French  interests. 

To  keep  all  this  region  under  closer  surveillance,  the  French 
authorities  had  already  given  orders  to  construct  some  new 
stockades,  —  one  above  Mobile,  another  near  the  Natchez,  and 
a  third  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio.  Bienville  was  making 
ready  to  go  up  to  the  Natchez  when  word  reached  him  of  the 
fearful  devastation  which  that  tribe  was  making:  among;  the 
French,  trustfully  scattered  in  their  neighborhood.  It 
was  the  beginnmg  or  the  ruthless  Natchez  wars,  and  with  the 

Natchez. 

we  have  the  story  in  the  narratives  of  Richebourg  and 
Penicault.  It  should  be  remembered  that  both  of  these  chron- 
iclers are  partisans  of  Bienville  in  his  quarrels  with  Cadillac. 
They  both  say  that  what  had  angered  the  tribe  was  the  gov- 
ernor's impidsive  rejection  of  the  Natchez  calumet,  offered  to 
him  while  passing  up  and  down  the  Mississippi  in  his  recent 
search  for  mines.  Crozat  in  France  sided  with  the  enemies  of 
Cadillac,  and  set  in  motion  the  influence  which  soon  led  to  his 
recall. 

Bienville  started  up  the  river  with  such  a  force  as  the  governor 
would  spare.  All  overtures  of  atonement  which  the  Natchez 
offered  him  were  rejected,  unless  they  were  accompanied  by 
the  surrender  of  the  murderers  or  their  heads.  His  persistence 
prevailed  ;  obedience  was  rendered,  and  he  even  got  their  help 
in  building  a  stockade  to  awe  them  for  the  future,  yg^ 
This  was  the  beginning  of  Fort  Rosalie,  the  earliest  '^°'*''^i'®- 
permanent  station  of  the  French  in  the  Great  Valley  south  of 
Kaskaskia. 

BienA^ille,    on  his   return    to   Mobile,   learned   of    Cadillac's 
recall.     A  new  governor,  L'Epinay,  was  to  be  sent  out,  but  until 
he  arrived  Bienville  held  the  chief  power.     This  con-  Bienviue 
trol  lasted  from  October,  1716,  till  March,  1717,  when  SLt 
L'Epinay  came,  in  company  with  some  soldiers  and   ^'^^''-^'^• 
emigrants.      He  had  instructions  to  carry  out  stringently  the 
monopoly  of  Crozat. 


102  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BUBBLE. 

Louisiana  had  now  a  population  of  about  seven  hundred, 
for  Crozat  had  done  little  to  increase  their  numbers.  He 
had  neglected  even  to  augment  the  laboring  population  by 
the  importation  of  blacks.  The  agricidtural  condition  of  the 
province  had  not,  therefore,  improved,  and  Crozat  was  in  real- 
ity bankrupt  after  four  years  of  unsuccessful  commercial  effort. 
Crozat  sur-  The  rcucwed  instructions  to  L'Epinay  had  been 
charter.  merely  a  last  gasp  of  power.  Indeed,  Crozat  was 
^^^^"  already  prepared  to  seek  relief  by  surrendering  his 

charter,  and  this  he  actually  did  in  August,  1717,  before  he 
could  have  known  anything  of  the  effect  of  his  last  injunctions. 

All    the  privileges  which    Crozat    had     enjoyed    were    now 

vested  in  a  new  organization  known  as  "  The  Company  of  the 

West,"  or  more   popularly  as  "  The  Mississippi  Com- 

Company  of  ... 

the  West  or    pauy."     Tlii^  bodv  rcccivcd  its  charter  September  6, 

Mississippi         t-^'L^  ."l  ,  ni-T^i 

Company.  1717.  Its  Capital  stock  was  fixed  in  December  at 
a  hundred  million  livres.  It  was  expected  to  restore 
the  shattered  finances  of  the  kingdom  by  funding  as  7'entes  the 
outstanding  Billets  d'' Etat^  the  government  guaranteeing  four 
per  cent,  on  its  capital.     This  was  to  be  Law's  opportunity. 

An  engrossing  search  for  mines  was  no  longer  to  imperil  the 
Bienville  prosperity  of  Louisiana,  and  the  Spaniards  were  to  be 
ofTh?""^  suffered  to  get  on  as  best  they  coidd  without  the  aid 
company.  q£  freuch  trade.  Bienville  was  understood  to  repre- 
sent the  best  spirit  in  the  province,  which  was  to  do  for  Louisi- 
ana what  the  Canadian  leaders  had  failed  to  effect  for  Canada, 
—  develop  its  agriculture  and  at  the  same  time  work  its  mines. 
In  being  constituted  by  the  company  the  governor  -  general, 
Bienville  felt  that  he  was  now  to  have  his  opportunity  to  make 
manifest"  the  possibilities  of  the  province.  Through  him  the 
company  could  regulate  all  civil  matters  ;  could  build  forts  and 
arm  vessels  for  its  defense.  It  was  claimed  that  frigates  of 
thirty  guns  could  patrol  the  Mississippi  for  six  hundred  leagues. 

This  new  life  for  Louisiana  had  a  lease  of  twenty-five  years, 
and  it  was  to  be  invigorated  by  bringing  into  the  country  six 
thousand  whites  and  half  as  many  blacks.  In  five  years  the 
company  did  actually  send  over  seven  thousand  settlers  beside 
six  hundred  slaves  from  Guinea. 

Law  had  already  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Regent,  and 
was  given  the  chief  control  of  the  company.     If  inevitable  dis- 


JOHN  LAW. 


103 


aster  overtook  his  stultified  adherents  in  Europe,  Louisiana  at 
least  ffot  a  start  in   somethino-  like  the   rioht  direc- 

TT     1  1  •  1  1         TP  p      1  1  Law's  influ- 

tion.     Under  these   impulses  the  life  oi  the  colony  ence  in 

IT  i>i  i»  Louisiana. 

besfan  to  assume  the  character  which  comes  trom  set- 

tied  labor,  and  lost  many  of  the  haphazard  turns  which  come 

from  vagrancy. 


About  sixteen  months  before  the  new  company  received  its 
charter.  Law  had  opened   in  Paris    (May  2,  1716)   L^win 
a  private  bank  of  issue,  which  the  government  had  ^"'^'  ^^^^" 
favored  as  a  means  of  absorbing  in  its  capital  seventy-five  per 


104  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BUBBLE. 

cent,  in  its  Billets  cVEtat.  Law  treated  it  as  an  experiment, 
hoping  by  his  success  to  induce  the  government  to  make  it  a 
royal  bank.  The  forming  of  the  new  company  was  an  oppor- 
tune help  to  that  end,  and  Law's  position  in  it  served  to  make 
it  subservient  to  the  wider  interests  of  the  kingdom. 

The  main  thing  was  to  populate  Louisiana,  and  create  an 
apparent  prosperity  by  numbers  and  labor  on  the  soil. 

Concessions      rrii-  i  'Pii  cf  i  i 

of  land  in       lo  tliis  end  conccssious  oi  land  were  ottered  to  those 

Louisiana.  i  i  i  i  i  i  •      t 

who  could  send  out  settlers,  and  as  a  greater  induce- 
ment to  speculation  the  grantees  were  not  required  to  accom- 
pany the  immigrants.  Law  himself  received  a  tract  on  the 
Arkansas  River,  and  agreed  to  send  out  fifteen  hundred  per- 
sons. Unluckily,  neither  he  nor  others  were  compelled  to  be 
careful  in  choosing  tenants.  So  we  find  a  good  part  of  the 
comers  for  a  while  to  be  vagrants  and  criminals,  but  on  May  9, 
1720,  an  order  was  issued  forbidding  such  recklessness. 

There  was  no  lack  of  general  interest  in  these  measures,  and 
one  finds  occasionally  in  cartographical  collections  a  "  Cours  du 
Maps  of  Mississippi  ou  Saint  Louis,"  as  the  map  was  called, 
Louisiana,  prepared  in  1718,  to  abet  the  fever,  at  the  command 
of  the  company,  by  a  leading  geographer,  Nicolas  de  Fer. 
Across  the  English  Channel  there  was  an  echoing  furor,  and 
an  old  plate  of  John  Senex's  "  Map  of  North  America  "  was 
revamped  to  meet  the  demand  for  information  about  the  new 
El  Dorado.  It  was  inscribed  to  Law.  Herman  Moll,  the  ris- 
ing English  cartographer,  inserted  (1720)  in  his  map  a  legend 
athwart  the  trans-Mississippi  region,  saying  that  "  this  country 
is  full  of  mines."  At  a  later  day,  1755,  Mitchell,  in  his  great 
map  made  in  the  English  interests  when  the  final  struggle  was 
impending,  recalled  the  fever  in  the  legend :  "  Mines  of  Mara- 
meg,  which  gave  rise  to  the  famous  Mississippi  scheme,  1719." 

Early  in  February,  1718,  three  ships  sent  by  the  Company  of 
Ships  the  West  arrived  at  Dauphine  Island.     They  brought 

arrive.  1718.  ^^  Bienvillc  a  commission,  giving  him  the  authority  of 
commandant.  There  were  already  movements  in  progress  for 
new  surveys  of  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  so  as  to  establish 
an  entrance  from  the  Gulf  more  practicable  than  that  by  way 
of  Lake  Pontchartrain.  Bienville,  with  his  new  powers,  now 
sent  a  party  to  clear  the  ground  for  a  trading-post  at  a  spot 
on  the  river  about  a  hundred  miles  from  the  Gulf,  which  had 


-sfP-"' 


f<'-  ..L^^- 


^*ri 


[This  map  is  from  Bowen  and  Gibson's  North  America,  London,  1763,  showing  tlie  country 
of  tlie  Black  Padoucas,  the  Osages,  and  the  alleged  mining  region  upon  which  Law  and  his 
followers  based  their  expectations  of  wealth.] 


106  THE   MISSISSIPPI  BUBBLE. 

already  attracted  the  commandant's  attention.  This  was  on  a 
New  Or-  curvG  of  the  shore  where  the  banks  were  about  ten 
leans.  1718.  fgg|.  a^^Qve  the  stream.  Back  from  this  the  land  fell 
off,  and  when  it  reached  Lake  Pontchartrain  there  was  but  lit- 
tle to  prevent  its  waters  breaking-  over  the  swampy  margin.  It 
was  nevertheless  the  most  inviting  site  in  the  almost  universal 
morass  which  lined  the  course  of  the  river.  The  storehouses  and 
traders'  cabins  with  clay  chimneys  which  soon  showed  them- 
selves were  the  beginning  of  the  destined  city  of  New  Orleans. 
While  everything  was  yet  crude  and  unfinished,  some  ves- 
sels sent  by  the  Mississippi  Company  landed  in  this  infant 
colony  (March  9)  three  companies  of  infantry  and  a  small  body 
of  colonists.  In  August,  three  hundred  more  settlers  came, 
and  they  were  soon  scattered  uj)  the  river  on  the  various  conces- 
sions. Two  men,  to  whose  care  in  chronicling  events  we  owe 
much  of  our  knowledge  of  these  early  days  in  Louisiana,  were 
among  these  grantees.     One  was  Benard  de  la  Harpe,  who  had 

a  grant  on  the  Red  River,  and  who  has  left  us  a  jour- 
and  nal  of  events.     The  other  was  Le  Page  du  Pratz,  who 

settled  near  the  Natchez,  where  he  lived  for  eight  years, 
and  gathered  much  curious  information  from  the  Lidians.  All 
this  he  gave  to  the  world  in  a  Histoire  de  la  Louisiane  forty 
years  later  (1758). 

In  March,  1719,  five  hundred  negroes  were  landed  ;  in  the 
following  October,  a  large  body  of  Alsatians  and  other  Germans 
arrived,  a  portion  of  whom  at  least  had  been  sent  by  Law  as 
settlers  upon  his  own  grants.  If  these  developments  prom- 
ised well,  a  check  to  them  was  already  prepared  in  a  war  with 
Quadruple  Spain.  In  August,  1718,  the  representatives  of  Eng- 
wM  witii^"*^  land,  France,  Holland,  and  the  Empire  had  formed  a 
Spam.  1(18.  quadruple  alliance,  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  uphold- 
ing the  treaty  of  Utrecht  and  forcing  Spain  into  an  observance 
of  its  provisions.  A  declaration  of  war  against  Spain  proved 
necessary,  and  on  December  17  (January  9,  1719,  New  Style), 
hostilities  were  decided  upon.  The  news  reached  Mobile  in 
April,  and  Bienville  at  once  organized  a  force  to  surprise  Pen- 

sacola.     After  a  brief  investment   by  sea  and  land, 

Pensacola  iii  i  ^  •  tt 

taken  and      he  took  the  placc  and  sent  the  prisoners  to  Havana. 

The   Spaniards   seized  the  ships  which  had   brought 

the  prisoners,  and  during  the  summer  returned  and  retook  the 


LAW'S  LOUISIANA. 

[From  Hel  Groote  Tafereel 
der  Dwansheid,  etc.  Amster- 
dam, 1720.] 


108  THE  MISSISSIPPI  BUBBLE. 

town.  They  tried  at  the  same  time  to  make  an  impression  on 
the  French  post  at  Dauphine  Island,  but  the  opjiortune  arri- 
val of  some  ships  from  France  completed  the  discomfiture 
of  the  assailants,  and  they  withdrew.  It  was  again  Bienville's 
turn,  and  Pensacola  once  more  fell,  into  his  hands  in  Septem- 
ber, 1719.  When  Philip,  the  Spanish  king,  succumbed  and 
joined  the  alliance,  and  there  was  peace  in  1721,  Pensacola 
was  confirmed  at  last  to  its  Spanish  founders. 

Meanwhile,  Law's  projects  were  ripening  for  good,  as  every- 
L^^,g  body    seemed    to    think,  —  at    least   for    everybody's 

Company.  individual  good,  if  not  for  the  public  good.  The  Re- 
gent, then  in  power,  placed  all  sorts  of  privileges  in  the  extended 
hands  of  Law.  The  shares  of  his  company  became  so  buoyant 
in  the  market  that  nobody  dreamed  of  a  precipice.  The  old 
stories  of  mines  in  Louisiana  were  revived,  and  their  sites  were 
figured,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  maps.  Ingots  were  produced 
at  the  mint  in  evidence,  —  coming  from  Mexico,  very  likely. 

The  one  thing  more  for  Law  to  do  was  to  get  all  the  money 
in  France  into  a  bank  of  royal  jDrestige.  Then  loans  would  no 
longer  be  necessary.  Interest  and  taxation  would  disappear. 
Both  crown  and  people  woidd  happily  discover  that  true  credit 
is  what  the  state  gains  by  an  excess  of  paper  over  bullion.  On 
January  1,  1719,  such  a  state  of  financial  bliss  came  in  with 
the  new  year.  The  Banque  Generale  of  the  Scotch 
Royaie.  prophct  became  the  Banque  Royale  of  France,  with 
the  Regent  for  sole  proprietor.  A  few  days  later  (Jan- 
uary 5),  Law  was  proclaimed  its  director.  He  was  allowed 
to  make  an  unlimited  circulation  of  notes,  and  the  Company  of 
the  West  existed  to  work  them  off.  He  was  permitted  to  put  a 
tariff  upon  all  things  bought  and  sold.  In  this  way  everything 
was  absorbed  by  it. 

In  May,  it  was  known  in  Louisiana  that  the  Company  of  the 

West  had  engulfed  the  Companies  of  the  East,  and 

the  Indies,     bcforc  lonsT  the  colony  was  directed  to  receive  more 

1719.  .  . 

paper  and  pay  for  it  with  all  the  coin  it  had.  In 
June,  1719,  the  conglomerated  companies  took  the  name  of  the 
Company  of  the  Indies,  while  the  frenzy  still  grew  on  the  Paris 
exchange.      In  July,  the  profits  of  the  mint  were  added  to  its 

Note.    The  opposite  view  of  Quinquempoix  is  from  Het  Groote  Tafereel  der  Dwaasheid,  etc. 
Amsterdam,  1720. 


110  THE   MISSISSIPPI  BUBBLE. 

resources,  and  this  privilege  was  to  run  for  nine  years.  The 
stock  gave  a  new  bound  upward,  only  to  be  temporarily  de- 
pressed, upon  a  rumor  of  Law's  illness.  An  installment  plan 
was  introduced,  and  so  the  circle  of  victims  was  inordinately 
widened.  By  the  end  of  the  year  (1719),  there  were  half  a 
million  foreigners  gesticidating  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  eager 
for  something.  "  Paris,"  says  the  English  pamphleteer  already 
cited,  "  like  the  temple  of  Fortune  among  the  heathen,  is  resorted 
to  by  innumerable  crowds  of  every  nation,  quality,  and  condi- 
tion, and  the  dirty  kennel  of  Quinquempoix  has  for  some  time 
been  more  frequented  than  the  Royal  Exchange  of  London." 

The  capital  stock,  increased  to  six  hundred  thousand  shares, 
rose  to  fifteen  thousand  francs  a  share  and  even  higher,  —  some 
thousands  per  cent,  advance  in  the  end.  It  came  to  be  known 
that  three  thousand  millions  of  livres  were  borne  on  the  face 
of  its  aggregated  paper. 

In  January,  1720,  Law  became  comptroller-general  of  the 
kingdom.  In  February,  the  company  absorbed  the 
comptroller-  Banquc  Royalc  with  all  its  privileges.  The  entire 
money  power  of  the  country  was  now  at  Law's  dis- 
posal, and  every  tax  came  into  his  hands.  But  the  fabric  had 
begun  to  totter.  Law  was  at  his  wits'  end  to  keep  this  from 
being  known.  In  May,  he  tried  a  hazardous  expedient,  and 
issued  a  royal  decree  to  reduce  values.  Within  a  week  he 
saw  he  had  made  a  blunder,  and  the  decree  was  revoked.  It 
proved  too  late.  Shrinking  hope  had  succeeded  to  buoyant 
exhilaration.  Law  worried  through  the  summer  and  autumn, 
uncertain  how  to  turn.  By  December,  he  was  sure  that  no 
Law  one  could  be  longer  deceived.     He  put  eight  hundred 

disappears.  Jiyres  in  his  pocket  one  day  and  disappeared.  The  end 
had  come. 

As  soon  as  the  news  of  Law's  flight  reached  Louisiana 
Germans  in  (Ju"e,  1721),  the  Germans  who  had  been  sent  to  oc- 
Louisiana.  cupy  his  couccssiou  bccamc  alarmed,  and  in  the  follow- 
ing November  Charlevoix  saw  their  deserted  villages.  To  pacify 
them,  a  new  grant  was  made  by  the  authorities,  twenty  miles 
up  the  river  from  New  Orleans,  and  wljat  is  to-day  known  as 
the  "  German  Coast  "  along  the  stream  marks  where  they  set- 
tled. They  began  a  new  industry  in  supj)lying  vegetables  for 
the  young  capital  of  the  province. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   BARRIERS   OF   LOUISIANA. 

1710-1720. 

If  La  Harpe  and  St.   Denis  liad  failed  in  finding  in  the 
southwest  an  overland  way  to  the  South  Sea,  there  was 
a  vague  hope  that  it  might  yet  be  revealed   in  the  and  a  pas- 
northwest.    If  Lahontan's  story  of  his  Ri\dere  Longue  western 
was  now  generally  discredited,  since  Delisle,  the  lead- 
ing geographer  of  France,  had  pronounced  against  it,  there  were, 
however,  still  a  few  credulous  cartographers,  like  Homann  of 
Nuremberg,  and  Moll  the  English  map-maker,  who  placed  it  on 
their  maps.     The  common  opinion   among  those  interested  in 
this  problem  of  a  western  way  to  the  Pacific  pointed  rather  to 
the  Missouri,  or  perhaps  to  some  way  from  Lake  Superior  by 
a  higher  latitude.      It  was  a  report  that   explorers  had  gone 
four  hundred  leagues  up   the  Missouri   without    encountering 
any  Spaniards,  but  that  a  hundred  leagues  farther  tribes  were 
reached  who  were  warring  with  them.     It  was  a  natural  appre- 
hension that  Spanish  success  in  an  Indian  war  in  this  direction 
might  enable  these  rivals  to  slip  in  before  the  French  in  this 
western  route.     Cadillac  shared  this  fear,  and  was  watchful  to 
report  all  rumors  from  the  far  country  to  his  superiors  at  Paris. 

A  priest  at  Versailles,  Father  Bobe,  who  had  a  correspondent 
at  Mobile,  was  acting  just  now  as  an  intermediary  between 
Baudot,  one  of  the  secretaries  of  Pontchartrain,  and  Bob^and 
Delisle  the  cartographer,  in  the  rectification  of  the  ^^"^'^■ 
latter 's  maps.  He  tells  the  geographer  that  his  letters  from 
Louisiana  speak  of  a  populous  country,  which  the  Spaniards 
had  discovered,  towards  the  western  sea,  and  suggests  that 
Bourbonia  would  be  a  good  name  for  it  on  the  maps. 

In  October,  1717,  the  Sieur  Hubert  made  a  report  to  the 
minister  of  the  marine  upon  an  alleged  route  by  the  Missouri, 


112  THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

through  a  rich  mining"  country,  and  he  supposed  it  to  lead  to  a 
mountain  barrier,  where  the  springs  of  eastern  and  western 
flowing  rivers  could  not  be  far  apart.  The  notion  was  not  a 
novel  one,  but  it  had  always  been  veiled  in  conjecture.  Delisle 
and  others  put  near  the  eastern  edges  of  their  maps  a  lake, 
with  an  outlet  towards  the  Pacific,  but  they  avoided  any  direct 
presentation  towards  the  west  of  the  mouth  of  such  rivers. 
Intimations  in  the  book  which  Tonty  discarded,  and  in  the 
Carolana  of  Coxe,  had  more  or  less  familiarized  the  reading 
public  with  like  notions,  which  were  soon  to  be  reinforced  in 
the  great  English  map  of  Popple. 

Bourgmont,  a  trader  who  had  been  for  fifteen  years  traffick- 
ing on  the  Missouri,  was  responsible  for  a  story  that  the  Panis 
(Pawnees)  and  their  kindred  in  the  remote  west  were  trading 
with  other  peoples  living  about  a  great  lake.  This  far-away  race 
were  represented  as  small  of  stature  and  dressed  like  Europeans. 
There  was  a  suspicion  that  they  might  prove  to  be  Chinese. 

It  was  thought  by  some  to  be  a  favorable  condition  of  a  route 
The  Mis-  ^y  *^i^  Missouri,  that  the  tribes  along  its  current  were 
represented  to  be  more  tractable  than  Indians  gen- 
erally were,  while  more  to  the  north  the  mutual  hos- 
tilities of  the  Sioux  and  Christineaux  rendered  exploring  pe- 
culiarly dangerous.  Begon,  the  Canadian  Intendant,  informed 
(October  11,  1718)  the  Paris  government  that  all  hopes  of  a 
successful  search  for  the  western  sea  must  be  abandoned  unless 
these  savages  could  be  forced  into  peace  with  each  other. 

In  a  memorial  which  was  prejjared  at  Paris  in  1718,  outlin- 
ing a  plan  for  giving  Louisiana  a  dominating  position  in  North 
America,  it  was  made  a  part  of  the  means  to  that  end  that  the 
mines  on  the  Missouri  should  be  worked,  and  commerce  with 
Mexico  established  from  that  base.  Inasmuch,  it  went  on  to 
say,  as  the  Missouri  has  one  branch  leading  to  the  South  Sea, 
trade  can  also  be  opened  with  Japan  and  China. 

In  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1719,  there  were  two  adven- 
turers, incited  by  such  stories  as  these,  endeavoring 
on  the  to  discovcr  the  meaning  of  them.     One,  La  Harr)e, 

Missouri.  -i         -\r'      •      •        •    •         a  •!  n 

had  gone  up  the  Mississippi  in  August  with  a  small 
escort,  and  was  soon  among  the  Osages  on  the  Missouri,  finding 

Note.     The  opposite  cut  is  a  section  of  Popple's  great  Map  of  the  British  Empire  in  America 
(1732),  sliowing  the  supposed  lake  and  its  outlet  towards  the  west. 


souri  route 
to  the  west 
em  sea. 


^VOU^X^, 


)*1^ 


;.»^* 


7?. 


ol!  the 


x^  T2sr  o  jr-s 


<JS^2*ac~^/r,v/taY^^ 


r,_M 


GENTLEMAN'S  MAGAZINE,   JUNE,   1763. 


POPPLE,   1732. 


114  THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

unicorns  and  other  creatures  suited  to  his  fanciful  expectations. 
Finally,  on  September  6,  reaching  a  point  on  the  Missouri 
among  the  Tonacaras  (latitude  37°  21'),  he  judged  the  spot 
favorable  to  command  the  trade  of  the  Padoucas  and  Spaniards. 
Perhaps  he  got  rumors  of  Valverde,  the  governor  of  Santa  Fe, 
who  just  about  this  time  was  j)ushing  north  into  Colorado  and 
Kansas,  as  far  as  any  Spaniards  had  yet  been.  At  this  point 
La  Harpe  found  a  Chickasaw  trader,  and  in  his  presence  set 
up  a  pillar  in  token  of  French  possession.  This  was  on  one 
branch  of  the  Missouri,  and  he  went  no  farther. 

The  other  explorer,  Du  Tisne,  had  followed  another  branch, 
and  reached  the  Panis  at  a  point  supposed  to  be  where 

DuTisn6  TT  1  1  1      1        T-1 

on  the  Mis-  f  ort  Kilcy  uow  stands.  Here  he  planted  the  r  rench 
standard  forty  leagues  beyond  the  Osages.  This  peo- 
ple had  unsuccessfully  endeavored  to  bar  his  progress,  and  when 
he  passed  beyond  them  he  found  the  Panis  hostile,  and  was 
put  to  some  anxiety  in  pacifying  them.  It  proved  to  be  difficult 
to  obtain  their  consent  to  going  farther  to  reach  the  Padoucas, 
whom  they  looked  upon  as  foes,  saying  that  they  stood  in  the 
way  of  carrying  on  trade  with  the  Spaniards.  Du  Tisne,  how- 
ever, was  too  determined  to  be  withstood,  and  he  succeeded  in 
erecting  a  column  among  the  Padoucas  on  September  27,  1719. 

A  more  northern  route  had  engaged  the  attention  of   the 

priest  Bobe  —  already  mentioned,  —  who,  in  the  same  letter  in 

which  he  had  asked  Delisle  to  efface  Lahontan's  river  from  his 

maps,  had  referred   to  the  possibility  of  discovering  a  western 

route  from  the  head  of  the  Mississippi.     It  was  far 

Source  of-  .  I'l  i  ^  o    t       r^ 

the  Missis-  from  Certain  at  this  day  where  the  sources  oi  the  ijrreat 
River  were.  Cadillac  j)laced  its  head  in  48°  north  lat- 
itude, in  a  lake  which  had  another  outlet  northward  into  what 
is  now  known  as  Lake  Winnipeg,  and  this  dual  outflow  was  not 
an  infrequent  conception  for  some  time  to  come.  The  latitude 
of  this  source,  moreover,  varied  much,  and,  "  according  to  Indian 
reports,"  there  was  found  occasion  among  the  geographers  to 
place  it  anywhere  from  47°  to  55°.  Bob^'s  idea  was  that  over 
a  divide  at  this  source  there  would  be  found  a  river  flowing 
to  the  western  sea.  He  added  that  on  the  borders  of  this  sea, 
according  to  the  report  of  the  savages,  there  were  bearded  men 
"  who  pick  up  gold  dust  on  the  shore."     This  coveted  strand 


A    WESTERN   WAY,  115 

lay,  in  his  belief,  far  beyond  many  other  nations,  to  whom  the 
French  had  not  yet  come.  These  stories,  as  he  affirmed,  had 
been  picked  up  among  the  Sioux. 

The  passage,  meanwhile,  which  had  most  engaged  the  atten- 
tion of  the  oovernmeut  was  one  lyinjij  beyond  Lake  Su- 

.  .  .  T  •  Passage  be- 

perior,  in  the  direction  which  Iberville  had  followed  yondLake 

(•  TT     1  ?     T-»  1      0  T  1         Superior. 

from  Hudson  s  iiay,  twenty  years  before.  It  was  the 
route  by  which  ultimately  Verendrye  reached  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. Vaudreuil  had  recommended  this  route,  and  it  was 
approved  by  the  Regent,  June  26,  1717.  It  was  recognized 
as  too  far  distant  from  bases  of  supply  to  be  sustained  by  the 
Indian  trade,  and  that  the  government  must  consequently  sup- 
port an  exploration  by  grants.  De  la  Noiie  had  already  been 
dispatched  to  Lake  Superior  to  gain  information,  and  in  1717 
he  had  reestablished  Duluth's  old  fort  at  the  head  of  the  lake. 
In  September,  1718,  Vaudreuil,  under  the  orders  he  had  re- 
ceived, sent  forward  a  party  to  begin  operations  in  earnest. 
These  explorers  soon  found  how  pestilent  the  Sioux  could  be, 
and  the  Indians  allied  with  the  French  in  the  exploration  were 
imder  constant  irritation  at  the  difficulties  which  the  Sioux  in- 
terposed. The  movement  resulted  in  placing  two  new  forts  in 
this  country,  one  upon  the  Lac  des  Christineaux  or  Lake  of  the 
Woods,  and  the  other  upon  the  Lac  des  Assinipoiles.  This  last 
was  the  water  later  known  as  Lake  Winnipeg,  which, 

HT-      •      •        •     LakeWinni- 

as  we  have  seen,  was  connected  with  the  Mississippi  peg  and  the 
in  Cadillac's  judgment.     Homann,  Van  der  Aa,  Jail- 
lot,  and  other  secondary  cartographers,  were  constantly  repre- 
senting it  as  the  source  of  the  Mississippi. 

The  establishment  of  these  forts  served  two  purposes.  They 
gave  advanced  positions  for  further  progress.  What  was  per- 
haps of  more  importance,  they  interposed  a  barrier  to  prevent 
the  English  from  pushing  west  from  Hudson's  Bay,  where  they 
were  now  well  established  under  the  treaty  of  Utrecht.  The 
forts  might  possibly  sustain  themselves  by  the  Indian  traffic  ; 
but  it  was  thought  that  the  government  would  have  to  make 
an  actual  outlay  of  something  like  fifty  thousand  francs,  before 
this  occidental  sea  could  be  reached.  This  was  not,  neverthe- 
less, an  adequate  calculation  of  the  great  cost  which  would  have 
to  be  incurred  in  transporting  goods  from  the  ships  at  Montreal 
to  so  remote  a  region. 


116  THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

In  the  original  grant  to  Crozat,  the  Illinois  region  had  been 
Michi  an  ^^^^  within  the  jurisdiction  of  New  France,  as  the  Que- 
peninsuia.  -^^^  government  was  officially  called.  This  took  all  the 
country,  roughly  speaking,  lying  about  the  Illinois  River  and 
eastward  to  the  Wabash,  while  the  lower  peninsula  of  Michigan 
fell  naturally  under  the  oversight  of  the  commander  at  Detroit, 
though  Lemaire  and  others  extended  Louisiana  up  to  the  straits. 
La  Salle  had  crossed  this  peninsula  along  its  southern  edge  at 
a  perilous  time,  but  we  have  little  record  of  any  acquaintance 
with  its  interior.  The  map-makers,  like  Senex,  drawing  upon 
report  or  imagination,  represented  the  divide  between  Michigan 
and  Huron  as  an  elevated  terrace,  along  which  stretched  "  a 
walk  above  two  hundred  miles  in  length."  So  much  ignorance, 
in  fact,  prevailed,  in  spite  of  familiarity  with  the  neighboring 
portages  of  Chicago  and  St.  Joseph,  that  Jaillot,  in  1719,  in  a 
map  dedicated  to  the  king,  slavishly  followed  the  geogi-aphy  of 
Sanson  (1656)  and  obliterated  entirely  Lake  Michigan,  putting 
in  its  place  the  Bay  of  the  Puants  (Green  Bay)  as  a  pocket  of 
Lake  Huron. 

The  years  which  followed  the  treaty  of  Utrecht  made  an  op- 
French  portuuity  for  France,  but  the  chance  was  lost.  Ri- 
coionization.  y^^iXvj  witli  England  had  failed  to  teach  her  govern- 
ment the  secrets  of  successful  colonization.  It  appears,  how- 
ever, from  some  of  the  memorials  presented  to  the  crown,  that 
the  lesson  was  not  lost  upon  all  her  subjects.  She  was  content 
with  her  greater  power  over  the  savages.  For  the  most  part 
she  continued  to  maintain  this,  despite  the  fact  that  in  all  arti- 
cles of  trade,  excej^t  firearms,  powder,  and  a  few  trinkets,  she 
charged  the  Indians  more  than  the  English.  The  French  had 
failed,  nevertheless,  to  discern  what  Champlain  had  clearly  seen 
a  hundred  years  before,  that  the  very  qualities  which  made  their 
character  attractive  to  the  Indian  unfitted  it  for  the  real  life 
of  a  pioneer,  if  such  an  existence  meant  the  subduing  of  the 
soil. 

When  Louis  XIV.  died,  on  September  1,  1715,  he  told  his 
Louis  XIV.  grandson  that  he  was  conscious  of  his  failure  to  be  a 
dies.  1715.  solace  to  his  people.  The  history  of  the  French  in 
America,  indeed,  gives  constant  tokens  of  his  baleful  influence 
in  the  colony,  which  might  have  been  the  brightest  jewel  of  his 
crown.    New  France  had  been  crushed  by  grinding  monopolies, 


[From  Sayer  and  Jefferys'  reproduction  of  Danville's  North  America  (London),  showing  the 
current  conception  of  the  Michigan  peninsula.] 


118  THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

and  Louisiana  was  now  undergoing  the  same  degradation. 
This  monopoly  diverted  energy  from  building  up  a  state  in 
order  that  it  might  sustain  the  aspirations  of  hucksters. 

The  Iroquois  played  fast  and  loose  with  this  Gallic  instinct, 
The  Iroquois  ^^  8'^^^  wliat  they  could,  and  to  let  the  English  gain 
western  uiorc.  To  kccp  tlic  ludiaus  of  the  west  steadfast  in 
tribes.  ^j^g  Frcnch  service,   it  was  necessary  either  to  bind 

these  neai'er  tribes  in  peace,  or  raid  their  country  to  keep  them  at 
home.  Truces  were  made  and  unmade  according  to  the  savage 
humor.  The  western  fur  trade  ebbed  and  flowed  accordingly. 
The  French  had  reestablished  a  post  at  Mackinac  (1714),  but 
without  great  benefit  to  their  trade,  for  the  English  gained 
most  by  it.  Through  the  Iroquois  influence  the  Foxes  (Outa- 
gamies)  and  their  associates  about  Green  Bay  were  kept  pretty 
steadily  on  the  English  side.  The  Illinois,  as  French  allies, 
were  fair  game  for  them,  and  they  occasionally  pounced  upon 
them,  much  to  the  annoyance  of  their  white  friends.  The 
Foxes  had  not  forgotten  their  disasters  at  Detroit,  and  had  of 
late  been  waylaying  French  traders  at  the  Green  Bay  portage. 
The  Sauks  and  Sioux  were  with  them  in  spirit,  and  the  Iroquois 
waited  their  opportunity.  The  combination  threatened  a  great 
peril;  the  advice  of  Perrot,  now  an  old  man,  for  effecting  a 
reconciliation,  was  not  followed,  and  the  Quebec  government 

sent  Louvigny  in  March,  1716,  to  chastise  the  Foxes. 
and  the         He  was  enjoiucd  further,   if  possible,  to  exterminate 

them  for  being  the  ferocious  instigators  of  the  conspir- 
acy. The  campaign  was  vigorously  conducted,  and  in  October 
Louvigny  was  back  in  Quebec,  reporting,  not  the  destruction, 
but  the  submission  of  the  savages.  He  had  clinched  their  sub- 
jection by  a  treaty,  and  brought  with  him  some  hostages  to 
compel  the  observance  of  it.  The  Foxes,  notwithstanding, 
proved  treacherous,  and  nothing  could  assuage  their  implacable 
hostility. 

These  dangers  besetting  the  older  portages  led  to  a  more 

general  use  of  the  passage  by  the  Maumee  and  Wa- 


The 


northern  basli,  as  Coxc  in  liis  Carolcmci  informed  the  English 
po  ages.  py]3ijg  {^  1722.  Thc  post  at  Vincennes  probably  be- 
came a  recognized  station  at  this  time,  though  it  was  nearly 
twenty  years  before  it  can  be  said  to  have  ripened  into  a  social 
community.     This  line  of  contact  by  the  Maumee  between  the 


THE  ILLINOIS  COUNTRY. 

[From  a  corner  map  iu  the  large  General  Map  of  the  British  Middle  Colonies,  as  corrected 
after  PownaU,  1776.] 


120  THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

two  great  valleys  was  the  only  one  just  now  well  guarded. 
That  by  the  Fox  and  Wisconsin  rivers  had  become  well-nigh 
deserted.  The  routes  near  Chicago  were  also  subject  to  savage 
raids,  and  La  Salle's  fort  of  Crevecoeur  had  been  abandoned. 
The  French  tried  to  draw  the  Miamis  to  settle  about  and  pro- 
tect the  St.  Joseph  portage ;  but  the  English  offered  superior 
inducements  for  them  to  cluster  about  their  traders  on  the 
Maumee.  To  keep  out  the  Iroquois,  the  French  constructed  a 
stockade  at  Ouiatanon  (1720),  on  the  north  bank  of  the  Wa- 
bash.   East  of  the  Maumee  and  all  along  the  southern 

South  shore  pxit^'i  ci 

of  Lake  shorc  ot  Lake  Erie,  the  confederates  were  still  a  ter- 
ror. The  French  had  not  dared  to  establish  a  sing'le 
post  in  this  wide  region,  and  Governor  Spotswood  of  Virginia 
was  eagerly  urging  the  occupation  of  it  by  the  English. 

This  southern  shore  of  Lake  Erie  was  to  remain  little  known 
for  a  long  time.  A  canoe  going  west  from  Niagara  River,  on 
its  way  to  Detroit,  found  this  coarse  thirty  miles  longer  than 
the  northern  shore.  This,  added  to  the  terror  of  the  Iroquois, 
had  made  the  southern  banks  an  untracked  wilderness,  and  no 
one  had  dared  to  follow  the  footsteps  of  La  Salle  athwart  the 
region.  The  Ottawas  and  other  tribes  squatted  about  Detroit 
occasionally  used  the  Sandusky  portage  to  reach  the  Ohio  on 
their  raids.  Except  for  this,  there  was  little  to  alarm  the  vast 
herds  of  buffalo  which  roamed  amid  its  water-courses. 

There  were  reasons,  then,  why  the  French  government,  revers- 
ing the  provisions  of  Crozat's  charter,  was  ready  to 

The  Illinois  *  ,        tit        •  x         •    •  •  i  i 

country         auucx  tlic  lUmois  couiitry  to  Louisiana,  m  order  that 

joined  to  .  .         .  .    ,        ,  .,  , 

Louisiana,      its  communications  niioht   be  more  easily  preserved. 

1717.  .  ,  .  "^     ^ 

A  decree  of  the  king  in  council,  September  27,  1717, 
establishing  this  union,  came  at  a  period  when  renewed  attention 
to  that  up-river  country  was  awakened  because  of  fresh  accounts 
of  it  published  in  the  Lettres  HJdifiantes. 

On  February  9,  Pierre  Dugue  Boi-sbriant,  a  cousin  of  Bien- 
Boi.sbriant  villc,  arrived  at  Mobile  with  a  commission  to  com- 
iiHnois.         mand  in  the  Illinois.     He  was  directed  to  build  a  fort 

1718,  jj-^  j-jjg  government.  He  was  also  to  keep  watch  on 
the  English,  who  might  be  attracted  by  the  mines  which  he 
was  expected  to  open.  In  October  he  started  up  the  Missis- 
sippi in  canoes,  carrying  a  hundred  men,  and  in  December  he 
was  at  Kaskaskia.     He  began  his  fort  sixteen  miles  above  that 


^^-.^^ 


'*:.?_    Jt*. 


,4,,  •*  *'*-^^ 


'^^ 


1'^'^ 


"A 


?Ct^       -J"-   ^s^'L*'- 


3 


% 


,>' 


,K-<-!-d 


<J^ 


KASKASKIA  AND  KAHOKIA. 
[Part  of  a  Map  of  the  Course  of  the  Mississippi,  grave  par  Tardieu.} 


122  THE   BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

place  on  the  left  bank  o£  the  Mississippi,  and  in  the  spring  of 
1720  it  was  completed,  and  named  Fort  Chartres  in 
Chartres.  Compliment  to  the  Regent  of  France.  It  was  placed 
one  mile  from  the  river;  but  to-day  its  site  is  partly 
covered  by  the  current.  The  United  States  land  commissioners 
at  Kaskaskia,  December,  1809,  reported  that  the  neighboring 
village,  which  originally  stood  "  a  small  distance "  below  the 
fort,  "  had  been  mostly,  if  not  wholly,  washed  away  by  the 
river." 

The  next  year,  the  mission  at  Kaskaskia  was  converted  into 
a  parish, —  a  sio-n  of  permanence  in  the  life  of  the 

Kaskaskia  ox 

and  the         upper  vallcv  whicli  had  been  slow  in  comino-.     It  was 

mines.  i     i        n        i       i     i  i  .  p 

helped,  doubtless,  now  by  a  temporary  passion  tor 
mining,  instigated  by  the  fever  which,  as  we  have  seen.  Law 
was  spreading  in  Paris.  One  Philippe  Francois  Renault 
brought  thither  at  this  day  some  two  hundred  miners  and  five 
hundred  slaves ;  but  Kaskaskia  profited  in  the  end  more  by  the 
families  which  came  in  his  train.  The  lead  mines  of  the  mod- 
ern Galena  were  opened,  and  life  was  active  for  a  while. 

Canada  had  now  a  population  of  about  twenty-three  thousand. 
Some  manufactures  of  coarse  fabrics  were  beginning; 

Canada.  *  * 

and  the  merchants  of  Quebec  were  allowed  for  the 
first  time  to  open  an  exchange,  and  enjoy  partial  freedom  in 
their  business.  It  was  a  slight  sign  that  new  ways  of  life  were 
beginning  to  operate ;  but  they  were  to  be  too  much  hampered 
for  a  generous  competition  with  the  English. 

There  was  need  to  withdraw  the  attention  of  Canada  from 
this  new  activity  in  the  Illinois  country.  All  along 
Appalachian  the  Appalachian  range,  the  natural  bulwark  of  the 
English  colonies,  the  French  were  constantly  looking 
for  English  aggression,  but  only  at  the  northern  end  in  New 
York,  and  at  the  southern  end  below  Carolina,  was  there  im- 
minent danger.  The  English  had  long  ingratiated  themselves 
with  the  Indians  who  guarded  those  approaches.  Here,  as  Moll 
in  his  maps  designated  them,  the  "  Charakeys  and  Iroquois " 
formed  efficient  outposts  for  the  English. 

Though  New  England  was  territorially  apart  from  this  ex- 
tended frontier,  she  had  a  decided  mission  in  helping  to  sustain 


QUEBEC   THREATENED.  123 

the  efficacy  of  the  barrier.     This  mission  was  to  disconcert  any 
western  aggression  of  the  Canadians  by  keeping  their  -^^^ 
attention  upon  the  northeast.     To  this  end,  in  1710,  England. 
Nicholson's  fleet  had  sailed  from  Boston,  and  in  October  it 
took  Port  Royal  in  Acadia.     All  the  colonies  north  of  Penn- 
sylvania only  looked  upon  this  success  as  an  earnest  of  some- 
thing more.     Their  governors  accordingly  held  a  meeting  at 
New  London,  and   established  their  respective    quotas   for   a 
more  serious  attack  the  next  year.     The  English  government, 
in  the  mean  while,  promised  to  help  them  with  a  naval  contin- 
gent.   Sir  Hovenden  Walker  with  a  fleet  reached  Bos- 
ton in  due  time.     With  Samuel  Vetch  commanding  annament 
the  provincials,  the  armament  sailed  at  the  end  of  Quebec. 

1711. 

July,  1711,  to  carry  out  the  confident  plans  of  St. 
John,  the  English  minister.  New  England  bore  the  odium  of 
the  failure,  though,  if  Jeremy  Dummer  is  to  be  believed,  she 
did  not  deserve  it.  A  royal  favorite.  General  Hill,  in  command 
furnished  quite  enough  incapacity  to  relieve  the  Yankees  of  the 
responsibility.  Canada  was,  indeed,  ill  prepared  ;  but,  fortu- 
nately for  her,  she  was  not  put  to  a  severe  test.  The  elements 
needed  no  ally,  and  shattered  Walker's  fleet  in  the  St.  Law- 
rence (August).  Everybody's  courage  oozed  out,  and  no  one 
dared  to  repair  the  loss  which  the  gales  had  caused,  and  proceed 
to  the  attack.  Sir  Hovenden,  with  what  was  left  of  his  fleet, 
turned  and  fled  ;  and  in  October  the  disgraced  general  was  in 
England  charging  the  New  Englanders  with  his  misfortunes. 

A  land  force,  which  had  meanwhile  gathered  at  Albany, 
waiting  for  happy  tidings  of  a  naval  victory  before  advancing 
by  Lake  Champlain,  never  got  farther,  and  Canada  breathed 
freer. 

Thus  New  England  in  this  chance  failed  to  do  her  part  in  the 
general  attack,  and  New  York  remained  inert.  There  was,  per- 
haps, a  too  narrow  policy  of  self -protection  prevailing  at  Albany. 
At  any  rate,  Massachusetts  thought  so,  and  (May.  11,  1711) 
complained  to  Lord  Dartmouth  "of  the  criminal  neutrality 
maintained  by  New  York  with  the  French  Indians." 

Robert  Hunter  had  shortly  before  (June  14,  1710)  been 
transferred  as  governor  from  Virijinia  to  New  York. 

~  New  York. 

He  knew  that  the  southern  colonies  felt  as  bitterly 

toward  New  York  as  New  England  did ;  for  while  the  Iroquois, 


124  THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

unchecked,  raided  down  the  Appalachians  to  Carolina,  the  New 
Yorkers  treated  them  tenderly  along  the  Mohawk.  Logan  of 
Pennsylvania,  in  a  memoir  to  the  home  government,  a  little 
later,  recognized  this ;  but  at  the  same  time  he  insisted  that  the 
safety  of  the  colonies  as  a  whole  depended  on  their  maintaining 
the  good-will  of  the  Iroquois  in  New  York.  To  this  end.  Gov- 
ernor Hunter,  while  he  felt  there  was  no  effective  union  of  the 
colonies,  was  hanging  the  silver  crowns  of  Queen  Anne  about 
the  necks  of  the  Iroquois  warriors  in  token  of  their  obligations 
to  fight  on  the  English  side.  All  the  while.  Hunter's  assembly 
was  earnestly  representing  to  the  throne  that  the  French  were 
scouring  all  the  back  country  and  misguiding  the  Indians. 
"  He  ought  to  be  a  cunning  man  who  treats  with  the  Indians," 
says  an  English  writer  at  this  point,  "  and  therefore  the  French 
leave  it  to  the  Jesuits."  Fortunately,  the  English  had  a  match 
for  the  priest  in  Madame  Montour,  who  was  usefully  employed 
Madame  occasioually  iu  conferences  with  the  confederates.  She 
Montour.  ^^^  ^|^g  daughter  of  a  French  Canadian  by  a  Huron 
woman,  but  had  been  captured  in  youth  by  the  Iroquois,  and 
had  since  lived  among  them,  married  to  an  Oneida  chief.  The 
French  never  forgot  her  unnatural  defection. 

It  was  in  some  respects  a  more  striking  influence  upon  the 
Iroquois  which  Schuyler  exercised  when  he  took  five 
chiefs  in  Moliawk  cliicf  s  to  England,  and  let  them  see  the  evi- 
dences of  British  power.  They  had  their  portraits 
taken,  and  a  series  of  mezzotints  following  those  pictures  were 
favorite  prints  among  our  ancestors.  Addison  and  Steele  made 
the  sachems  play  conspicuous  parts  in  the  scenic  weeks  of  the 
Tatler  and  Spectator. 

It  was  not  the  policy  of  the  French  to  let  the  provisions  of 
the  treaty  of  Utrecht  have  all  their  effect  on  the  Iro- 
and  the  quois  ;  and  the  English  made  steady  complaints  of 
the  insidious  schemes  of  Joncaire  and  other  French 
intriofuers  to  draw  the  confederates  over  to  the  French  interests. 
It  grew  to  be  a  constant  assertion  that  "  the  French  were  de- 
bauching the  Iroquois  through  the  Jesuits  and  by  other  means." 

In  July,  1715,  Colonel  Heathcote  notified  Governor  Hunter 
that  the  French  had  entered  the  Onondaga  country  in  force, 
for  the  purpose  of  erecting  a  fort  there.  He  urged  the  colonial 
governments  to  build  a  line  of  posts  along  the  frontier,  "to 


THE  IROQUOIS.  125 

answer  the  lino  of  settlements  the  French  have  for  some  time 
been,  and  are  now,  making  from  the  Mississippi  to  Canada." 
Schuyler,  as  acting  governor,  tried  in  return,  but  unsuccessfully, 
to  induce  the  Onondagas  to  drive  Joncaire  from  their  villages. 
All  the  while,  the  confederates  were  not  chary  of  their  profes- 
sions of  friendship,  and  in  August,  1715,  the  record  of  one  of 
their  councils  with  the  English  represents  them  as  saying,  "  We 
must  acquaint  you  that  we  have  a  hatchet  of  our  own,  which  we 
have  had  of  old,  and  which  has  always  been  very  successful  and 
fortunate.  It  has  subdued  a  great  many  nations  of  Indians, 
and  we  have  made  their  habitations  a  wilderness  and  desolate, 
and  that  hatchet  is  still  lying  by  us  ready,  and  it  is  yours  as 
well  as  ours." 

These  rival  bids  for  the  confederates'  alliance  naturally  divided 
the  tribes,  and  at  least  a  third  of  them  had  before  this 

11  TOT  irn  1  ^^®  Iroquois 

been  drawn  away  to  the  ot.  L/awrence  and  fallen  under  on  the  st. 
the  direct  influence  of  the  French.    So  we  find  Logan  of 
Pennsylvania  rather  pitifully  complaining,  in  1718,  that  beyond 
what  was  left  to  them  of  the  Iroquois,  the  English  had  hardly 
fifteen  hundred  Indians  in  their  interests  north  of  Carolina. 

The  great  Iroquois  trail  passed  west  from  Albany,  by  succes- 
sive "  castles  "  of  the  confederates,  and  so  on  to  the  iroquois 
Niagara  portage.  Another  path  branched  off  among  *'^*"^' 
the  Senecas  and  passed  down  the  upper  streams  of  the  Alle- 
ghany to  the  Ohio.  This  was  one  of  the  routes  along  which 
occupation  must  be  pressed,  and  the  passage  made  familiar,  if 
the  traders  from  Albany  were  to  join  those  from  Pennsylvania 
and  Virginia,  and  make  good  in  the  end  the  occupation  of  the 
Ohio  valley. 

In  these  years,  large  numbers  of  Lutheran  Palatines  were 
seeking  asylums  in  England,  and  near  three  thousand 
of  them  came  to  swell  this  westward  tide  along  the 
Mohawk.  Among  them  were  the  orphaned  Zenger,  who  was 
later  to  champion  a  free  press  in  Pennsylvania,  and  the  parents 
of  Conrad  Weiser,  who  was  to  become  the  conspicuous  interme- 
diary with  the  Ohio  Indians  when  the  decisive  epoch  came. 

The  French  were  making  ready  to  check  this  advance,  and  at 
a  later  day  (1721),  when  Joncaire  fortified  a  post  at 
Niagara,  the  act  was  promptly  resented  by  the  Eng- 
lish as  an  encroachment.     It  was,  however,  as  the  occupants  of 


126  THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

the  post  contended,  nothing  more  than  a  natural  result  of  the 
possession  of  that  strategical  point  by  La  Salle  in  the  previous 
century. 

The  English  sought  to  counteract  this  movement,  and  pre- 
serve their  trade  with  the  remoter  tribes,  threatened 
through  this  occupation  of  Niagara,  by  planting  their 
power  at  Oswego.  Burnet,  now  the  governor  of  New  York, 
strove  to  make  his  assembly  authorize  the  construction  of  a  fort 
at  that  point ;  but  failing  in  this,  he  used  his  private  means  to 
do  it.  The  governor  at  Quebec  protested.  He  did  not  dare 
to  eject  the  intruders,  as  he  called  them,  but  resorted  to  new 
intrigues  with  the  Iroquois  to  make  those  Indians  drive  the 
English  off.  The  ultimate  result  of  this  bold  step  of  Burnet 
was  that  the  French  put  two  armed  vessels  on  the  lake,  and 
tried  to  intercept  the  Indian  trade  by  a  post  at  the  modern 
Toronto.  The  English,  on  the  other  hand,  hoped  to  put  a  stop 
to  the  clandestine  trade  by  which  Albany  supplied  goods  to  the 
Montreal  traders,  now  prohibited  by  law  (1720).  To  effect 
this,  they  constructed  Fort  Lydius  on  the  Hudson,  fourteen 
miles  from  Lake  George,  —  later  to  become  better  known  as 
Fort  Edward. 

While  the  rivals  were  playing  off  one  measure  against 
The  Scotch-  another  along  the  Iroquois  route,  there  was  no  inac- 
insh.  ^JQjj  farther  south.     Along  the  Pennsylvania  border, 

the  Scotch-Irish  were  receiving  new  currents  of  their  valiant 
blood.  This  North  Irish  people  had  been  paid  for  their  devo- 
tion to  the  Protestant  succession  in  England  by  so  much  perse- 
cution for  their  non-conformity  that  they  had  sought  relief  by 
coming  to  the  American  colonies  in  large  numbers.  Governor 
Shute  had  tried  to  settle  a  part  of  those  who  had  come  to  Mas- 
sachusetts along  the  Maine  coast  and  throughout  the  northern 
frontiers,  hoping  to  make  them  bear  the  brunt  of  the  Canadian 
onsets.  The  first  immigration  had  landed  in  Boston  in  1712. 
Continued  raids  of  the  Indians  had  so  unsettled  some  of  their 
abodes  that  a  part  of  these  northern  frontiersmen  were  insti- 
gated to  join  their  kindred  in  Pennsylvania.  Some  Palatine 
Germans,  discontented  with  the  aristocratic  preemp- 
tions of  lands  about  them,  followed  not  long  after  from 
the  Mohawk  country,  and  thus  the  pioneer  blood  of  the  com- 


SPOTS  WOOD   OF   VIRGINIA.  127 

munities  pressing  against  the  Alleglianies  was  doubly  reinforced. 
The  tide  of  emigration  which  was  yet  to  surge  through  the  moun- 
tain passes  coukl  have  no  hardier  stocks  for  the  task  before  it. 

All  the  while  that  these  people  and  others,  chiefly  servants 
released  from  contracts,  were  spreading  up  the  streams  toward 
the  mountains,  the  authorities  of  Pennsylvania  kept  out  some 
adventurous  youths,  wandering  afield,  so  as  to  observe  what  the 
French  were  doing  along  the  Ohio.  In  1718,  Governor  Keith 
of  Pennsylvania  was  transmitting  the  reports  of  these  scouts  to 
the  home  government.  At  the  same  time  he  urged  the  pg^r  of  the 
Lords  of  Trade  to  establish  a  fort  on  Lake  Erie.  ^'^°*=^- 
In  his  Carolana,  Coxe  was  enforcing  the  dangers  of  delay,  and 
picturing  the  risks  which  would  unhappily  result  if  by  conni- 
vance of  the  Iroquois  the  French  got  foothold  on  the  lake. 
He  pointed  out  how  the  portages  to  the  Susquehanna  and  the 
Juniata  would  open  a  way  for  an  attack  on  Pennsylvania  and 
Virginia. 

A  bustling,  active  man  was  now  ruling  in  Virginia.  Gov- 
ernor Spotswood  had  been  a  soldier,  and  had  been  gpotswood 
wounded  at  Blenheim.  To  show  his  career  in  Virg-inia  '"  Virginia. 
his  many  letters  are  fortunately  preserved.  He  had  early  made 
inquiries  of  the  Indians  about  the  springs  of  the  Potomac,  and 
had  been  informed  that  they  were  in  a  lake  beyond  the  moun- 
tains, whence  the  current  issued  and  forced  its  way  through  the 
hilly  barrier.  Spotswood  argued  that  by  pushing  up  this  valley 
and  through  this  gorge,  there  was  a  fair  chance  of  being  able 
to  cut  the  line  of  French  communications  from  Canada  to 
Louisiana.  He  thought  that  the  English  would  have  an  advan- 
tage in  maintaining  posts  in  this  trans-montane  country  over 
the  French,  inasmuch  as  their  supplies  would  be  carried  by  a 
shorter  line. 

Spotswood  was  a  loyal  supporter  of  the  English  sea-to-sea 
charters.  He  claimed  that  the  grant  to  Penn  went  to  Li^j^g  ^f 
the  borders  of  Ontario,  as  some  contemporary  maps  ^"'K'"'*- 
represent  it.  The  Virginia  charter,  he  contended,  included  all 
other  territorial  rights  to  the  west,  north  of  Carolina,  In  this 
he  formulated  the  Virginia  claim,  which  was  only  abandoned  by 
her  cession  of  the  northwest  lands  at  the  close  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary War.  Under  Spotswood's  interpretation,  this  charter 
covered  the  Great  Lakes  from  Erie  west,  and  took  in  a  large 


128  THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

part  of  the  country  bordering  on  the  upper  branches  of  the 
Mississippi. 

In  announcing  this,  Spotswood  showed  abundant  ignorance  of 
what  the  French  had  done.  "  In  which  space  westward  of  us,"  he 
says,  in  1720,  "■  I  don't  know  that  the  French  yet  have  any  set- 
tlements, nor  that  any  other  European  nation  ever  had.  Neither 
is  it  probable  that  the  French  from  their  new  plantations  will 
be  able  in  some  years  to  reach  the  southern  boundaries  men- 
tioned in  the  charter  of  Virginia."  He  then  contends  that  the 
French  posts  on  the  lower  Mississippi  are  within  the  charter 
limits  of  Carolina.  By  the  last  advices,  he  adds,  the  French 
have  a  settlement  at  "  Habbamalas,"  as  he  calls  the  Alabama 
region,  where  in  fact  the  French  had  been  seated  for  more 
than  a  decade. 

In  one  of  his  letters  (December  10, 1710),  Spotswood  records 
The  valley  ^^^^^  somc  advciiturcrs  had  recently  gone  not  above  a 
of  Virginia,  hundred  miles  beyond  the  farthest  settlements,  and 
had  ascended  a  mountain,  before  deemed  inaccessible,  where 
they  had  looked  down  into  the  valley  of  Virginia.  Though  the 
descent  on  the  farther  side  seemed  easy,  they  had  not  tried  it 
because  the  season  was  late.  Not  far  from  the  same  time,  De 
Graffenreid  described  ascending  Sugar  Loaf  Mountain,  near  the 
sources  of  the  Potomac,  and  said  that  he  saw  from  the  summit 
three  distinct  ranges,  one  higher  than  the  other,  with  beautiful 
valleys  lying  between  the  nearer  hills. 

There  is  little  doubt  that  an  occasional  trader  had  for  a  long 
time  before  this  pushed  through  gaps  hereabouts,  but  with- 
out making  public  record  of  it.  The  Shawnees  were  in  the 
lower  parts  of  the  valley,  and  are  known  to  have  received,  and 
to  have  passed  west,  various  products  of  English  manufacture. 
Such  adventurers  could  scarcely  have  missed  observing  the 
well-defined  traces  of  the  buffalo  between  gap  and  gap.  A  few 
years  later  (1715),  the  movement  of  the  English  in  this  direc- 
tion was  exciting  alarm  among  the  French.  Father  Mermet, 
at  Kaskaskia,  even  reported  that  the  English  were  building 
forts.  The  French  were  trying  to  induce  the  Indians  of  the 
Wabash  to  avoid  the  English  traders  who  were  coming  among 
them.  These  pioneers  were  in  part  from  Virginia,  which  had 
become,  next  to  Massachusetts,  the  most  populous  of  the  Eng- 
lish provinces.     The  great  influx   of    Germans    into  Virginia 


KNIGHTS   OF  THE   GOLDEN  HORSESHOE. 


129 


had  already  begun,  and  they  were  pushing  back  towards  the 
mountains. 

In  1716,  Spotswood  made  his  famous  reconnaissance  with  his 
Knights  of  the  Golden  Horseshoe,  for  such  was  the  spotswood 
insignia  with  which  lie  later  decorated  his  compan- 
ions on  this  jaunt  of  jubilation.  We  have  the  journal 
of  John  Fontaine,  who  accompanied  the  governor,  — 
meagre  enough,  but  with  Spotswood's  letters  it  constitutes  most 
of  the  knowledge  which  we  have  of  the  undertaking.  Robert 
Beverly,  the  historian  of  Virginia,  was  another  companion,  but 
he  was  not  so  regardfid  of  posterity. 


and  his 
Knights  of 
the  Golden 
Horseshoe. 

niG. 


S^"*/» 


Ws'ti « 


SPOTSWOOD'S  ROUTE,  1716.     [According  to  Fontaine's  Journal.] 

It  lay  upon  Spotswood's  mind  to  probe  the  secrets  of  this 
western  barrier,  and  find  the  sources  of  the  rivers  which  formed 
the  great  highways  of  the  tide-water  districts.  He  wished  to 
discover  if  it  were  practicable  to  reach  the  great  western  lakes 
by  passing  these  Appalachian  gaps.  The  stray  hunters  and  trad- 
ers who  had  essayed  the  task  had  done  nothing  to  make  their 
routes  known.  Fontaine's  entry  of  August  20,  1716,  is  that 
at  Williamsburg  he  "  waited  on  the  governor,  who  was  in  read- 
iness for  an  expedition  over  the  Appalachian  Mountains."  On 
September  5,  he  writes  :  "  We  followed  the  windings  of  the 
James  River,  observing  that  it  came  from  the  very  top  of  the 


130  THE  BARRIERS    OF  LOUISIANA. 

mountains,"  and  reached  "  to  the  very  head,  where  it  runs  no 
bigger  than  a  man's  arm,  from  under  a  large  stone.  We  drank 
King  George's  health,  and  all  the  Royal  Family's,  at  the  very 
top  of  the  Appalachian  Mountains."  It  seems  evident  that  the 
party,  which  consisted  of  fifty  persons  and  a  train  of  pack- 
horses,  were  now  in  the  Swift  Run  gap,  which  they  had  reached 
in  thirty-six  days  from  Williamsburg.  "  About  a  musket-shot 
from  the  spring,"  says  Fontaine,  "  there  is  another  which  rises 
and  runs  down  the  other  side.  It  goes  westward,  and  we 
thought  we  could  go  down  that  way,  but  we  met  with  such  pro- 
digious precipices  that  we  were  obliged  to  return  to  the  top 
again.  We  found  some  trees  which  had  been  formerly  marked 
[blazed],  I  suppose,  by  the  northern  Indians,  and  following 
these  trees  we  found  a  good  safe  descent."  Going  on  seven 
miles  and  observing  "  the  footing  of  elks  and  buffaloes  and  their 
beds,"  a  large  river  flowing  west  was  reached  and  crossed. 
They  named  it  the  Euphrates ;  it  was  the  modern  Shenan- 
doah. "  The  governor  had  some  graving  irons,  but  could  not 
grave  anything,  the  stones  were  so  hard.  .  .  .  He  buried  a 
bottle  and  a  paper  inclosed,  on  which  he  writ  that  he  took  pos- 
session of  this  place  in  the  name  of  and  for  King  George  the 
First  of  England.  We  had  a  good  dinner,  drank  the  king's 
health  in  champagne,  and  fired  a  volley."  Fontaine  next  goes 
on  to  enumerate  an  abundant  variety  of  liquors  in  which  they 
drank  the  health  of  others.  The  return  trip  was  made  leisurely, 
and  when  they  reached  Williamsburg,  in  September,  the  itiner- 
ary of  their  busy  days  showed  that  they  had  traversed  a  distance 
of  four  hundred  and  forty  miles. 

Spotswood  later  made  a  report  to  the  Lords  of  Trade,  and 
said  that  "  by  the  relation  of  the  Indians,  who  frequent  those 
parts,  from  the  pass  where  I  was,  it  is  but  three  days'  march  to 
a  great  nation  of  Indians,  living  on  a  river  which  discharges 
itself  in  the  Lake  Erie :  that  from  the  western  sides  of  one  of 
the  small  mountains  which  I  saw  that  lake  is  very  visible,  and 
cannot  therefore  be  above  five  days'  march ;  and  that  the  waj^ 
thither  is  also  very  practicable,  the  mountains  to  the  westward 
of  the  Great  Ridge  being  smaller  than  those  I  passed  on  the 
eastern  side,  which  shows  how  easy  a  matter  it  is  to  gain  posses- 
ion of  these  lakes."  The  governor  then  proceeds  to  consider 
the  danger  from  the  French  occupation  of  this  trans-montane 


CAROLINA.  131 

region.  He  appai*ently  had  not  heard,  as  a  contemporary  Eng- 
lish map-maker  had,  of  the  "  Tionoutatecaga,"  who  beyond  the 
mountains  inhabited  caves,  so  as  "  to  defend  themselves  from 
the  great  heat "  ! 

Spotswood's  knowledge  of  the  French  beyond  the  Alleghanies 
had  grown  of  late,  and  he  now  began  to  have  a  better  concep- 
tion of  the  problem  which  the  English  had  to  solve.  He  says 
further :  "  The  British  plantations  are  in  a  manner  surrounded 
by  the  [French]  commerce  with  the  numerous  nations  of  Indi- 
ans settled  on  both  sides  of  the  lakes.  They  may  not  only  en- 
gross the  whole  skin  trade,  but  may,  when  they  please,  send  out 
such  bodies  of  Indians  on  the  back  of  these  plantations  as  may 
greatly  distress  his  Majesty's  subjects  here.  Should  they  mul- 
tiply their  settlements  along  these  lakes  so  as  to  join  their  do- 
minions of  Canada  to  their  new  colony  of  Louisiana,  they  might 
even  possess  themselves  of  any  of  these  plantations  they  pleased. 
Nature,  't  is  true,  has  formed  a  barrier  for  us  by  that  long 
chain  of  mountains  which  runs  from  the  back  of  South  Carolina 
as  far  as  New  York,  and  which  are  only  passable  in  some  few 
places  ;  but  even  that  natural  defense  may  prove  rather  destruc- 
tive to  us,  if  they  are  not  possessed  by  us  before  they  are 
known  to  them."  He  then  urges  that  settlements  should  be 
formed  on  the  lakes,  and  that  the  passes  on  the  way  to  them 
be  securely  held.  Above  all  he  urges  settlements  on  Lake 
Erie,  "  by  which  we  shall  not  only  share  with  the  French  in  the 
commerce  and  friendship  of  these  Indians  inhabiting  the  banks 
of  the  lakes,  but  may  be  able  to  cut  off  or  disturb  the  communi- 
cation between  Canada  and  Louisiana,  if  a  war  should  happen 
to  break  out  .  .  .  and  we  are  nearer  to  support  than  they  to 
attack.  As  this  country  [Virginia]  is  the  nearest,  .  .  .  and  as 
I  flatter  myself  I  have  attained  a  more  exact  knowledge  than 
any  other  Englishman  yet  has  of  the  situation  of  the  lakes,  and 
the  way  through  which  they  are  most  accessible  overland,  I 
shall  be  ready  to  undertake  the  executing  this  project  if  his 
Majesty  thinks  fit  to  approve  of  it." 

Spotswood  was  complaining  in  1711  of  the  exactions  put  by 
the  Carolina  government  upon  the  Virginia  traders.   Carolina 
These  impositions  had  forced  the  packmen  to  pass  by  trader' 
preference  south  into  Carolina,  and  thence  to  foUow  ^''^^^^-    - 


132 


THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 


well-established  trails  to  the  Cherokee  and  Chickasaw  villages. 
These  routes  are  shown  by  pricked  lines  in  a  map  by  Moll 
(1720),  and  the  paths  connecting  the  several  tribes  are  shown  on 
a  map  made  at  this  time  by  the  Indians  themselves.  The  con- 
temporary maps  often  put  a  legend  along  the  Tennessee  River 
to  the  effect  that  it  formed  the  usual  route  from  Carolina  to  the 
Illinois. 


INDIAN  MAP  OF  TRADERS'  PATHS. 

The  western  routes  had,  however,  suddenly  become  danger- 
indianwar.  ^us.  The  Tuscaroras,  Yamassees,  and  other  tribes, 
^^"-  all  along  the  frontier,  had  risen   (1711)  against  the 

English,  and  the   exposed  settlements   of  Swiss  and  Palatines 


CAROLINA   AND   THE  INDIANS.  133 

under  the  Carolina  jurisdiction  had  begun  to  suffer.  The  con- 
flict lasted  for  more  than  two  years,  and  checked  the  westward 
movement  up  the  Neuse  River.  Colonel  Moore,  by  a  success- 
ful campaign,  forced  the  Tuscaroras  out  of  the  country,  and 
they  joined,  as  has  already  been  stated,  their  kinspeople,  the 
Five  Nations  in  New  York,  making  a  sixth  in  the  Iroquois  Con- 
federacy. Quiet  followed  in  1713,  and  the  traders  were  once 
more  on  their  travels.  Penicault  encountered  three  of  them 
among  the  Natchez  in  1714.  An  Englishman,  Young  by  name, 
is  said  to  have  gone  beyond  the  Mississippi  to  arouse  the  more 
distant  tribes  against  the  French,  and  at  one  time  Bienville 
strove  to  embroil  the  Choctaws  with  the  Chickasaws,  simply 
because  these  latter  Indians  were  manoeuvring  in  the  English 
interest.  The  French  averred  that  it  was  the  policy  of  the 
English  to  set  one  tribe  against  another,  so  that  they  could  profit 
by  buying  the  prisoners  to  work  as  slaves  on  the  Caro-  in^uana  as 
lina  jjlantations.  This  practice  became  so  prevalent  ®''*^®^- 
that  in  1720  it  was  made  a  punishable  offense.  The  English, 
on  their  part,  charged  the  French  with  instigating  the  savages 
to  pillage  the  traders.  It  is  to  be  feared  that  no  accusation  of 
any  kind  can  be  safely  denied  against  either  nation.  Rivalry 
in  the  American  fur  trade  has  always  been  the  source  of  inhu- 
manity north  and  south. 

The  English  traders,   in  pressing  their  debtors  among  the 
nearer  Indians  and  inciting  new  enmities,  provoked  Yamassee 
the  Yamassee  war,  which  again  in  1715  involved  the  ^'^'"'  ^^^^' 
Carolina    borders  in    devastation,    not    without    the    suspicion 
that  vagrant  Virginia  packmen  supplied    the  marauders  with 
guns  and  powder. 

Next  to  the  rivalry  of  the  French,  that  of  the  English  colo- 
nies among  themselves  embittered  the  colonial  life. 
It  became  a  steady  complaint  in  Carolina,  as  it  did  in  and  the 
Massachusetts,  that  the  New  Yorkers   did  not  do  all 
they  could  to  prevent  the  ravages  of   the  Iroquois  on   other 
borders  than  their  own.     It  was  now  a  grievance  in  Charles- 
ton that  the  confederates,  through  such  remissness  at  Albany, 
were  raiding  south  along  the  Appalachians  and  harassing  the 
tribes  friendly  to  the  Carolinian  interests.     The  Iroquois  might 
have  the  ostensible  purpose  of  carrying  out  Governor  Hunter's 
injunction  to  attack  the  hostile  tribes  in  the  French  interests ; 


134  THE  BARRIERS   OF  LOUISIANA. 

but  they  were  pretty  sure  to  be  loose  in  their  discrimination 
when  on  their  southern  warpath.  The  complications  were 
many  which  marked  the  deplorable  conditions  of  the  English 
in  this  Yaraassee  war.  They  might  have  secured  immunity 
from  its  evils  if  they  had  leagued  themselves  with  their  new 
enemies  against  the  hated  northern  confederates,  but  this  would 
have  brought  fresh  disasters  along  the  Appalachian  borders  in 
the  alienation  of  the  Iroquois.  The  confederates  had  already 
harbored  the  Tuscaroras,  enemies  of  the  south,  and  the  Iroquois 
had  no  hesitancy  in  charging  the  war  upon  the  Carolinians  fail- 
ing to  recompense  those  tribes  who  had  assisted  them  in  expell- 
ing the  Tuscaroras.  Despite  these  difficulties,  the  Iroquois  were 
in  the  main  kept  to  the  English  interests.  They  professed  that 
their  messengers  went  "  with  their  lives  in  their  hands,"  to 
urge  the  Choctaws  to  keep  the  peace,  and  followed  the  warning 
up  with  active  participation  on  the  English  side.  "  If  the  war 
does  not  end  soon,"  said  Governor  Hunter,  "  the  confederates 
will  go  south  in  still  greater  force." 

The  French  were  of  course  at  the  bottom  of  all  these  border 
hostilities,  or  at  least  the  English  never  failed  to  think  they 
were.  The  government  of  South  Carolina,  in  1716,  was  repeat- 
ing these  stock  charges  against  the  French  to  the  Lords  of 
Trade.  All  the  while  the  increased  activity  in  Louisiana,  under 
the  influence  of  Law's  system,  was  creating  new  grounds  of 
anxiety  in  Carolina.  "  It  is  obvious,"  said  the  memo- 
rialists, "  how  formidable  the  French  will  grow  there 
during  peace,  considering  how  industrious  they  are  in  fre- 
quently supplying  their  settlements  with  people."  Late  advices 
from  France,  they  add,  show  how  many  colonists  are  going  from 
Brest  to  their  new  colony  of  "  Luciana  in  Mississippi,  which  by 
the  small  number  of  inhabitants  in  Carolina,  the  French  had 
the  opportunity  to  begin,  and  by  the  present  troubles  with  the 
Indians  are  encouraged  to  increase."  The  memorial  then  pro- 
ceeds to  advise  that  military  posts  be  placed  in  the  Bahamas  and 
on  Port  Royal  Island,  supported  by  cruising  vessels.  These 
will  be  safeguards,  it  adds,  which  perhaps  the  gold  mines  in  the 
Appalachians  will  suffice  to  maintain,  if  only  explorations  are 
made  to  discover  such  ore. 

Just  at  this  juncture  (1717)  a  movement  was  made  to  push 
settlements  into  the  Appalachians  on  the  grant  made  to  Sir 


MARGRAVATE    OF  AZILIA.  135 

Robert  Montgomery.     This  territory,  which  was  designated  as 

the  Maro^ravate  of  Azilia,  lav  between  the  Savannah 

TAii       •  111  1         11       p  A=='^'*-  1^17- 

and  Altamaha  rivers,  and  along  the  southern  banks  oi 

the  latter  stream.  The  project  was  to  make  such  settlements  a 
barrier  against  the  French  ;  but  settlers  failed,  and  after  three 
years  the  grant  was  reclaimed.  As  an  alternative  means  of 
protection,  Fort  King  George  was  now  built  at  the  forks  of  the 
Altamaha,  where  the  Oconee  and  Ocmidgee  rivers  unite.  This 
fort,  however,  was  not  long  maintained,  and  it  was,  in  part  at 
least,  because  the  province  was  not  able  to  defend  the  colony 
against  its  enemies,  that  South  Carolina  now  changed  its 
proprietary  government  for  a  royal  one.  At  the  same  time, 
claimants  under  the  old  "  Carolana  "  grant  were  petitioning  the 
Lords  of  Trade  to  settle  disputed  bounds  with  the  French  by 
making  the  "  Mischacebe  by  them  styled  Messisipy  "  the  divi- 
sion between  the  two  crowns. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

CHARLEVOIX   AND   HIS    OBSERVATIONS. 

1720-1729. 

The  student  feels  a  certain  confidence  in  facing  the  problems 

of  New  France  as  her  leaders  learned  to  know  them,  if 

and  the  Sea    hc  kccps  bcforc  him  tlic  imprcssions  which  an  intelli- 

of  the  West. 

gent  observer  like  Charlevoix  was  receiving  in  passing 
from  Mackinac  to  the  Gulf.  Not  one  of  these  questions  was 
older  or  of  steadier  recurrent  interest  than  the  riddle  of  the 
west.  When  Charlevoix  heard  that  the  climate  was  less  se- 
vere at  Lake  Winnipeg  than  on  the  St.  Lawrence,  though  it 

lay  fartlier  to  the  north,  he  did  not  fail  to  conjecture 
of  the  that  a  neighboring  sea  softened  the  rigors  of  a  boreal 

region.  There  was  as  yet  no  comprehension  of  that 
central  longitudinal  trough  of  the  continent  which  could  con- 
duct the  southern  winds  even  as  far  north  as  the  Arctic  circle ; 
and  exploration  towards  the  west  by  Lake  Winnipeg  had  as 
yet  revealed  nothing. 

The  Duke  of  Orleans  had  interested  himself  in  geographical 
questions,  and  it  was  in  large  part  to  satisfy  his  curiosity  in 
regard  to  a  route  to  the  Sea  of  the  West  that  Charlevoix  had 
been  dispatched  to  gather  such  information  on  this  point  as  he 
could.  This  Jesuit  priest  landed  in  Canada  in  1720,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  Mackinac  to  begin  his  inquiries.  A  journal  of  his 
Charlevoix's  movcments  and  observations  was  published  in  his 
writings.  well-known  Histoire  de  la  Nouvelle  France  (1744), 
and  we  have  an  official  report,  including  his  recommendations, 
in  a  letter  addressed  by  him  to  the  Count  de  Toulouse,  January 
20,  1723.  From  Mackinac,  July  21,  1721,  he  informed  the 
minister  that  he  had  visited  every  post  in  the  upper  country 
except  those  on   Lake  Superior.      He  had  made  up  for   that 


[From  Lafitau's  Mceurs  des  Sauvages,  Paris,  1724,  showing  the  prevailing 
view  as  to  the  extreme  northern  position  of  the  source  of  the  Mississippi,  and 
how  the  springs  of  the  Missouri  approached  the  western  sea.] 


138  CHARLEVOIX  AND  HIS   OBSERVATIONS. 

omission  by  studious  inquiry  of  priest,  trader,  bushranger,  and 
Indian  as  to  what  he  could  have  learned  had  he  gone  there. 
Charlevoix's  tendency  was  to  be  skeptical.    He  had  heard  the 
story  of  a  ship   working  eastward  from  the  Pacific 

Transconti-  -  ,  'ni  ^       -i       ^ 

nentai  tlirougli   northern    water-ways   till    she    reached   the 

Atlantic  above  Newfoundland  ;  but  he  found,  as  he 
thought,  that  the  story  originated  in  a  bad  French  translation  of 
a  Spanish  book.  Everywhere  the  Indians  told  him  that  there 
was  a  western-flowing  river  over  the  great  divide  which  confined 
the  sources  of  the  Mississippi,  Missouri,  and  St.  Pierre  rivers ; 
but  he  found  the  details  so  wild  and  contradictory  that  he  never 
quite  thought  the  story-tellers  honest.  Scouring  along  the  Mis- 
souri appeared  to  him  to  unfit  every  one  for  a  truthful  state- 
ment. La  Harpe  seemed  to  suspect  that  if  Charlevoix  had 
been  a  little  more  credidous  he  might  better  have  divined  the 
truth.     What  the  Jesuit  did  believe  seems  to  have 

The 

Missouri  becu  iu  a  general  way  that  the  Missouri,  somewhere 
in  its  springs,  did  interlock  with  other  waters  which 
sought  towards  the  west  an  unknown  sea  near  which  there  were 
white  men.  As  it  was  evident  the  Sioux  knew  more  than  any- 
body else  about  these  contiguous  fountains,  missionaries  among 
them  might  elicit  the  secret,  if  the  church  would  only  take  the 
matter  into  its  hands. 

This  belief  was,  indeed,  not  unshared  by  many,  layman  and 
priest.  French  and  English  tracts,  in  1720,  quote  Indian  tes- 
timony that  the  source  of  the  Missouri  is  in  "  a  hiU  on  the 
other  side  of  which  there  is  a  torrent  that,  forming  itself  by 
degrees  into  a  great  river,  takes  its  course  westward  and  dis- 
charges itself  into  a  large  lake."  Coxe,  in  his  Carolana  (1722), 
seems  to  have  better  conjectured  the  exact  geographical  rela- 
tion of  the  Missouri,  when  he  makes  one  of  its  branches  inter- 
lace with  a  stream  that  we  may  now  safely  identify  with  the 
Columbia,  while  another  branch,  opening  the  way  among  the 
Spaniards,  led  the  explorer  near  the  sources  of  other  rivers 
which  we  may  now  believe  to  be  the  upper  waters  of  the  Colo- 
rado, the  Arkansas,  and  the  Rio  Bravo  del  Norte. 

It  was  from  Santa  Fe,  on  the  latter  stream,  that  the  Spaniards, 
in  1720,  had  started  to  ioin  the  Padoucas  (Comanches) 

Spaniards  ,  ''  .  t     i       tit' 

from  Santa     near  the  Kansas  River  and  raid  toward  the  Missouri. 

F6.     1720. 

Their  idtimate  destination  was  thoug-ht  to   be  Fort 


[This  map  is  from  Bowen  and  Gibson's  North  America,  London,  1763,  showing  the  upper 
branches  of  the  Missouri  and  the  supposed  country  of  the  Padoucas,  Panis,  and  Kansas  tribes. 
The  "  French  route  to  the  western  Indians  "  touches  the  Mississippi  opposite  the  mouth  of 
the  Wisconsin  [Ouisconsing],  whence  Canada  was  reached  by  the  Fox  River  portage  and 
Green  Bay.] 


THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  141 

Chartres,  and  Boisbriant,  then  in  command  there,  had  timely 
notice  of  their  approach.  The  purpose,  doubtless,  was  to  divert 
the  Indian  trade  from  the  Illinois  to  Santa  Fe.  Boisbriant  was 
relieved  of  anxiety  when,  in  May,  1721,  he  learned  that  the  in- 
vading Spaniards  had  fallen  into  a  trap  among  the  Osages  and 
had  been  massacred.  The  question  then  of  interest  was :  Could 
the  route  laid  open  by  these  raiders  now  be  found  ? 

On  January  17, 1772,  the  Company  of  the  Indies  instructed 
M.  de   Bourgmont   (Bourmont,  Boismont,  Bournion), 
who  was  already  somewhat  familiar  with  the  country,  on  the  mis- 
to  do  what  he  could  to  hold  the  line  of  the  Missouri 
against  such  inroads   of  the  Spanish.     He  came  to  Louisiana, 
and  passed  up  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri,  with  the  hope  of 
establishing  friendly  relations  with  the  Indians.     This  done,  it 
might  be  easy  to  find  a  practicable  route  for  traders  to  reach 
New  Mexico.     There  was  already  some  irregidar  trafficking  in 
that  direction.     Exploration  seemed  to  be  turned  toward  this 
channel  of  trade  in  preference  to  discovering  the  "  mountains  of 
monstrous  height,"  that  were  reported  to  be  somewhere  up  the 
river  near  that  source,  which  Penicault  says  no  one  had  yet  found. 

Bourgniont's  first  movement  was  to  build  a  stockade  on  an 
island  (since  disappeared)  in  the  Missouri,  which  he  Yort 
called  Fort  Orleans.  It  was  a  base  for  further  prog-  ^'''^*°''- 
gress,  and  already  settlers  were  passing  up  the  stream.  A  body 
of  Germans  was  thereabouts  in  1723,  and  in  the  same  year 
the  earliest  grant  on  the  river  was  made  to  the  Sieur  Renard. 
During  the  year  before,  Bienville  had  ordered  Boisbriant  to  in- 
terpose somewhere  on  the  Kansas  River  a  fort  against  Spanish 
intrusion,  and  later  (August,  1723)  he  transmitted  through 
Boisbriant  to  Bourgmont  orders  (dated  January  17,  1722)  to 
ascend  the  Missouri  from  his  new  fort,  and  establish  another 
post  better  situated  to  engage  the  Spanish  trade.  He  was  di- 
rected to  defend  it,  if  necessary,  against  any  force  which  might 
be  sent  from  Santa  Fe.  To  secure  the  Indians,  he  was  ordered 
to  dole  out  gifts  to  them,  but  in  small  quantities,  in  order  to 
hold  them  in  allegiance  by  the  hope  of  more. 

Starting  from  a  point  near  the  modern  Atchison,  and  pro- 

NoTE.     The  map  on  the  two  following  pages  is  from  Dr.  James  Smith's  Some  Considerations  on 
ihe  Consequences  of  tlw  French  settling  Colonies  on  the  Mississippi.    London,  1720. 


144  CHARLEVOIX  AND  HIS    OBSERVATIONS. 

ceeding  through  northern  Kansas,  Bourgmont  approached  the 
Padoucas  or  Padoucas  late  in  June.  He  had  broken  down  on  the 
comauches.  jjjarch,  and  turned  back,  without  accomplishing  his 
purpose.  Ill  and  dispirited,  he  reached  his  fort  on  the  Missouri. 
Another  effort  succeeded  better,  and  in  November  he  was 
among  the  Padoucas,  and  was  able  to  bring  them  to  a  pact, 
by  which  they  agreed  to  open  the  way  to  the  Spaniards  through 
their  territory.  Suavity  and  a  lavish  bestowal  of  gifts  accom- 
plished all  that  Bourgmont's  instructions  called  for.  The  ques- 
tion was,  how  long  the  savage  consent  would  hold  good. 

Charlevoix  tells  us  that  in  1721  the  French  established  an 
j,„^  armed  post  at  the  mouth  of  the  Fox  River.    They  had 

Indians.  ^^g  yg^  eucountcred  no  people  whom  they  needed  so 
much  to  overawe  as  the  Foxes.  For  some  years,  these  savages 
rendered  it  a  fearful  risk  for  trader  or  adventurer  to  traverse 
the  country  lying  between  Lake  Michigan  and  the  Mississippi. 
Allied  with  the  Kickapoos,  they  seemed  determined  to  bar  every 
avenue  to  the  Sioux,  either  for  the  packman  or  priest.  With 
such  vigilant  enemies,  every  attempt  to  maintain  communica- 
tion between  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Mississippi  through  any 
territory  frequented  by  these  ubiquitous  savages  was  danger- 
ous. They  had  been  known  to  make  devastating  swoops  almost 
under  the  walls  of  Fort  Chartres.  A  crisis  which  Charlevoix  ap- 
prehended seemed  to  impend  in  1726,  when  the  Mascoutins  and 
Kickapoos  had  put  a  stop  to  the  use  of  the  Green  Bay  portage. 
When  affairs  were  the  darkest,  De  Lignery  succeeded  at  Mack- 
inac in  bringing  the  Foxes  to  a  peace,  and  they  even  agreed  to 
spare  as  allies  of  the  French  the  Illinois,  whom  they  had  been 
accustomed  to  worry.  De  Siette,  who  had  succeeded  Boisbriant 
in  command  at  Fort  Chartres,  had  little  faith  that  the  Foxes 
could  be  held  to  their  promise.  De  Lignery  was  suspicious  of 
their  attempts  to  join  the  Iroquois,  and  did  what  he  could  to 
block  their  way  to  the  confederates. 

With  the  Foxes  thus  temporarily,  at  least,  under  surveillance, 
there  was  a  chance  that  the  Sioux  could  be  better 
managed.     Recourse  was  accordingly  had  to  Charle- 
voix's plan  of  reaching  them  through  a  mission.     The  borders 
of  Lake  Pepin,  near  enough  to  their  territory  to  attract  them, 
seemed  the  most  eligible  position  for  the  effort. 


FORT  BEAUHARNOIS.  145 

Father  Guignas  was  selected  for  the  work  of  the  church,  and 
Rene  Boucher  de  la  Perriere  (or  Perier),  who  had  an  evil  name 
among-  the  English  for  his  merciless  inroads  upon  the  New 
England  borders,  was  put  in  charge  of  the  secular  part  of  the 
undertaking. 

The  party  left  Montreal  in  June,  1727,  and  trusting  to  the 
pacification  of  the  savages  near  the  Green  Bay  port-  green  Bay 
age,  passed  that  way.  We  can  follow  them  in  the  po'^**^^- 
priest's  journal.  They  met  friendly  greetings  among  the  Win- 
nebagoes  on  the  pretty  little  lake  where  this  people  dwelt,  and 
on  August  15  they  arrayed  themselves  in  the  village  of  the 
Foxes,  "  a  nation,"  as  Guignas  describes  them,  "  much  dreaded," 
but  without  reason,  as  he  thinks,  since  they  are  reduced  to  only 
about  two  hundred  warriors.  He  became  confused  with  the 
perplexing  tortuousness  of  the  river,  and  found  the  actual  port- 
age little  better  than  half  a  league  of  marsh  mud.  Once  upon 
the  Wisconsin,  he  counted  thirty  leagues  to  the  Mississippi. 
Turning  up  this  river,  their  course  lay  northerly  for  fifty-eight 
leagues,  as  he  measured  it,  winding  among  islands,  till  they 
reached  a  widening  of  the  stream,  destitute  of  is- 
lands, which  was  known  as  Lake  Pepin.  Here,  about 
the  middle  of  September,  the  party  staked  out  a  stockade,  a 
hundred  feet  square,  with  two  bastions,  and  in  four  days  com- 
pleted it,  and  called  it  Fort  Beauharnois.  It  was  the  first  set- 
tlement on  the  Mississippi  north  of  the  Illinois.  They  had 
trusted  the  Indians'  advice  in  placing  it,  as  they  supposed,  above 
the  highest  level  of  the  water,  but  in  the  following  April  a 
freshet  forced  the  reconstruction  of  it  on  higher  ground.  In 
due  time  nearly  a  hundred  cabins  of  the  Sioux  sprang  up  about 
the  fort. 

The  Foxes  had  proved,  however,  far  less  tamable  than  the 
Sioux.     Their  treacherous  maraudings  still  continued. 

cj  The  Foxes. 

The  two  hundred  warriors  whom  Guignas  had  thought 
so  placable  were  still  true  to  the  same  instincts  which,  a  hun- 
dred years  and  more  later,  their  descendants  manifested  under 
Blackhawk.  De  Siette  was  inclined  to  renew  the  war  and  ex- 
terminate them,  if  he  could  ;  but  when  the  king  heard  of  it, 
he  remembered  the  sad  results  of  past  attempts  to  annihilate 
the  savages,  and  wrote  to  Beauharnois,  April  29,  1727,  to  call 
a  halt.     The  governor  counted  on  help  from  Louisiana,  which 


146  CHARLEVOIX  AND  HIS   OBSERVATIONS. 

was  much  more  exposed  to  ravages  than  Canada.  He  was  only 
anxious  to  strike  the  blow  before  the  savages  could  fly  to  the 
Iroquois  or  to  the  Sioux  of  the  prairies.  In  the  spring  of 
1728,  it  seemed  no  longer  possible  to  desist  from  a  war,  and  De 
Lignery  led  a  formidable  force  against  them ;  but  the  wily 
savages  eluded  their  pursuers,  and  little  was  accomplished. 

Such  were  the  impediments  to  western  progress  which  were 
Charlevoix  developed  during  the  years  following  Charlevoix's  study 
iiiSois  ^^  *^®  problem.      We  must  now  follow  his  observa- 

"^^-  tions  on  other  points.     From  Mackinac,  where  Charle- 

voix pursued  these  inquiries  as  to  a  western  way,  he  passed 
by  the  St.  Joseph  portage  to  the  Kankakee,  and  so  to  the  Missis- 
sippi, reaching  Cahokia  October  10,  1721.  There  had  been  a 
settlement  here  for  a  score  of  years  or  more.  Charlevoix  says 
that  its  inhabitants  told  him  they  had  originally  built  their 
cabins  on  the  bank  of  the  river.  In  three  years  the  current 
had  moved  so  far  to  the  west  as  to  leave  them  half  a  league 
inland.  He  found  the  French  at  Kaskaskia  living  in  ease  and 
taking  on  the  habits  of  settled  life.  Boisbriant  was  shortly 
afterwards  (1722)  to  sign  the  earliest  land  warrant  which  is 
on  record  there,  the  product  of  the  settlement  was 
and  the         iucrcasiug,  and  before  long  supplies  were  to  be  regu- 

yninfia. 

larly  sent  down  to  New  Orleans.  The  travelers  heard 
stories  of  mines ;  but  though  considerable  bodies  of  San  Do- 
mingo negroes  had  been  brojight  to  the  region  to  work  these 
deposits,  the  French  never  profited  much  from  mineral  wealth. 
Neither  Canada  nor  Louisiana  was  quite  content  with  the 
divided  interests  of  this  whole  region.  The  Canadian  bush- 
ranger took  advantage  of  the  uncertain  control,  and  passed 
from  one  to  the  other  jurisdiction  to  escape  punishment  for 
his  mischief.  It  was  from  these  roving  miscreants  that  the 
Sioux  and  Foxes  obtained  their  guns  and  ammunition. 

The  fact  was,  that  the  northern  limits  of  Louisiana  were  never 
Limits  of  definitely  determined.  The  makers  of  maps  drew  the 
Louisiana.  division  line  according  to  caprice,  shifting  it  uj)  and 
down  between  the  Natchez  and  the  Ohio.  Delisle  was  still 
applying  the  Spanish  designation  of  Florida  to  the  whole  north- 
ern coast  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  between  the  Appalachians 
and  New  Mexico.     In  1722,  he  stretched  the  province  up  the 


[From  Sayer  and  Jefferys'  reproduction  of  Danville's  North  America  (London),  showing  the 
position  of  Lake  Pepin  and  the  upper  Mississippi,  as  then  understood.] 


148  CHARLEVOIX  AND  HIS   OBSERVATIONS. 

Mississippi  to  the  line  of  the  Missouri,  and  in  1728  he  stopped 
it  at  a  point  below  the  Ohio.  His  "  Pays  des  Ilinois "  lies 
north  of  this,  between  the  northern  parts  of  New  Mexico  and 
the  Iroquois  country.  He  places  the  designation  "  Pays  de  Iro- 
quois "  so  indefinitely  that  it  does  not  help  to  settle  the  vexed 
question  whether  the  hunting-grounds  of  that  confederacy 
stopped  westwardly  at  the  Scioto  or  the  Miami,  or  extended 
even  farther. 

The  country  of  the  Illinois  had  been  added,  as  we  have  seen, 
Bounds  of  to  Louisiana  in  1717,  but  it  was  uncertain  whether 
the  uunois.  ^j^jg  Carried  the  jurisdiction  of  its  dependent  governor 
beyond  the  Kickapoos  and  Mascoutins,  or  to  the  line  of  the 
Wisconsin.  Homann,  in  his  maps,  ran  the  division  line  due 
west  from  the  Chicago  jjortage  to  the  Mississippi.  Moll,  the 
Englishman,  and  Jaillot,  the  Frenchman,  agreed  in  stretching 
it  across  the  country  below  the  Illinois  River. 

Vaudreuil,  representing  the  interests  of  Canada,  claimed  that 
the  Louisiana  of  Crozat's  charter  had  only  been  increased 
under  the  decree  of  1717  by  the  addition  of  the  Illinois  country, 
whatever  that  may  be.  It  was  a  dispute  between  him  and  Bois- 
briant,  as  local  governor  at  Fort  Chartres,  whether  the  latter's 
jurisdiction  extended  to  the  sources  of  all  the  affluents  of  the 
Mississippi  or  not.  Some  European  geographers,  like  Homann 
and  Jaillot,  even  made  the  Illinois  include  the  basin  of  Lake 
Winnipeg,  on  the  theory  of  the  continuous  connection  of  it  and 
the  Mississippi  in  one  system  of  water-ways. 

The  territory  in  dispute  between  the  French  and  English 
The  Ohio  traders  was  along  the  Wabash  and  up  the  Ohio  and 
country.  -^g  lateral  valleys.  Charlevoix  speaks  of  the  region 
north  of  the  Ohio  as  likely  to  become  the  granary  of  Louisiana. 
Senex,  the  English  cartographer,  made  it  appear  that  through 
this  region  "of  one  hundred  and  twenty  leagues  the  Illinois 
hunt  cows,"  and  he  magnified  the  reports  of  the  trade  in  buffalo 
peltries.  The  waning  power  of  the  Iroquois  and  the  coming 
of  the  Delawares  and  Shawnees  into  the  Ohio  valley  had  per- 
mitted the  French  to  conduct  more  extensive  explorations,  and 
they  had  found  themselves  liable  to  confront  all  along  the  vaUey 
the  equally  adventurous  English. 

The  Mississippi  Company  had  urged  (September  15,  1720) 


THE   OHIO   COUNTRY.  *      149 

the  building  of  a  fort  on  the  Wabash  as  a  safeguard  against  the 
English,  and  the  need  of  it  had  attracted  the  atten-  rpj,e  wabash 
•tion  of  Charlevoix,  Some  such  precaution,  indeed,  '=°""*''y- 
was  quite  as  necessary  to  overawe  the  savages,  for  now  that  the 
Mauniee- Wabash  portage  was  coming  into  favor,  the  Indians 
had  lately  been  prowling  about  it  and  nuirderiug  the  passers. 
La  Harpe,  in  172-4,  feared  the  danger  of  delay.  In  1725,  the 
necessity  for  some  such  protection  alarmed  Boisbriant  early  in 
the  year.  The  Carolina  traders  had  put  up  two  booths  on 
the  Wabash,  and  rumors  reached  Kaskaskia  of  other  stations 
which  they  had  established  farther  up  the  Ohio  valley.  These 
last  intruders  were  probably  Pennsylvanians,  —  at  least,  it  is  so 
assumed  in  the  treaty  made  at  Albany  in  1754.  The  language 
of  such  treaties  is  rarely  the  best  authority ;  but  it  is  certain 
that  Vaudreuil,  in  Quebec,  believed  it  at  the  time.  He  re- 
ported to  his  home  government  that  the  English  were  ^he  English 
haunting^  the  upper  waters  of  the  Wabash  and  trading  °°  ^^^  *^^'°* 
among  the  Miamis.  As  a  result,  we  find  the  Company  of  the 
Indies  (December,  1725)  instructing  Boisbriant  to  beware  of 
the  English,  and  to  let  M.  Vincennes,  then  among  the  Miamis, 
laiow  that  these  rivals  were  moving  in  that  direction.  The  next 
year  the  company  informed  Perier  (September  30, 1726)  of  their 
determination  to  be  prepared,  and  authorized  him,  in  concert 
with  Vincennes,  to  repel  the  English  if  they  apjiroached.  Vin- 
cennes had  already  been  reconnoitring  up  the  Ohio  valley,  to 
see  if  any  English  were  there. 

Here,  on  the  Ohio,  the  claims  of  authority  between  the  New 
Orleans  and  Quebec  governments  again  clashed.    The 
region  which  Vaudreuil  wished  to  protect  on  the  upper  in  dispute 
Wabash  was  held  by  him  to  be  within  Canada.     But  Canada  and 
there  was  a  Very  uncertain  line  separating  it  from  the 
lower  regions  on  the  same  river  which  Vincennes  was  urging 
the   government  of    Louisiana   to    strengthen.     This 
lower  post,  later  called  Vincennes,  after  the  name  of 
that  pioneer,  did  not  take  the  shape  of  permanence  till  about 
1734,  when  some  families  began  to  gather  about  the  spot ;  but 
all  the  while  its  chief  communications  seem  to  have  been  with 
Canada  by  the  Maumee  portage  beyond  the  post  of  Ouiatanon. 

The  French  always  had  a  certain  advantage  over  the  English 
on  the  Ohio.     Their  approach  to  it  from  below  was  assured  as 


150      -^      CHARLEVOIX  AND  HIS   OBSERVATIONS. 

long  as  they  held  the  lower  valley  of  the  Mississippi.  The 
Lake  Erie  portages  offered  ready  communication  with 
onthe'*''"^  Canada.  Their  possession  of  Niagara  enabled  them, 
upper  1 .  ^^  -watch  the  approaches  from  New  York  and  Penn- 
sylvania. Along  the  Alleghany  River  Joncaire  was  most  active 
in  his  intrigues  with  the  Shawuees,  now  scattered  upon  these 
upper  waters  of  the  valley.  He  succeeded  at  times  in  bringing 
them  into  treaty  relations  with  Montreal.  To  strengthen  their 
obligations  to  the  French,  he  took  care  that  smiths  were  kept 
among  them  to  repair  their  guns. 

Once  more  to  return  to  Charlevoix. 

He  passed  Fort  Chartres  in  company  with  a  young  officer, 
St.  Ange  by  name,  who  was  destined,  forty  years  and 
Chartres  more  later,  to  haul  down  its  flag,  then  the  last  banner 
Kaskaskia.  of  France  floating  east  of  the  Mississippi.  Charlevoix 
remarked  ho-jv^  the  increasing  settlements  between  the 
fort  and  Kaskaskia  were  beginning  to  look  like  a  continuous 
village.  He  spent  about  a  month  at  Kaskaskia  (October- 
November,  1721),  noting  much  of  what  has  already  been  re- 
counted as  to  the  condition  of  the  country  and  of  the  neigh- 
borino-  res-ions.  From  Kaskaskia  he  started,  November  10,  to 
descend  the  Mississippi.  Passing  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio,  —  he 
called  it  the  Wabash,  —  he  thought  it  the  finest  place  in  Louisi- 
ana for  a  settlement,  the  country  up  the  river  consisting,  as  he 
says,  of  "  vast  meadows  with  many  streams,  and  covered  with 
herds  of  buffaloes,  and  affording  the  shortest  route  to  Can- 
ada." He  felt  that  an  armed  post  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio 
could  best  keep  in  awe  the  Cherokees,  "  the  biggest  tribe  of  the 
continent." 

Reaching  the  bluffs  at  Natchez,  he  comments  on  what  he  calls 
Natchez.  Ibcrville's  fascination  with  the  spot,  and  the  laying  out 
"-^-  of  a  settlement  there,  which  had  been  called  Rosalie, 

after  Madame  the  Duchess  of  Pontchartrain.  "  But  this  pro- 
ject," says  Charlevoix,  "  is  not  likely  soon  to  be  carried  out, 
though  our  geographers  choose  still  to  set  down  such  a  town  on 
their  maps."     He  found  a  storehouse,  but  little  trade. 

Farther  down  the  river,  the  Jesuit  stopped  and  inspected 
the  concessions  recently  awarded  in  furtherance  of  the  financial 
movements  in  France,   and  on  January  5,  1722,  he   reached 


DUMONT'S  PLAN  OF  NEW   ORLEANS,  1718-1720. 


152  CHARLEVOIX  AND  HIS   OBSERVATIONS. 

New  Orleans.  Five  days  later  he  writes  thus :  "  The  eight  huu- 
New  Or-  drecl  fine  houses  and  five  parishes  which  the  newspapers 
leans.  1722.  ^^^  years  ago  [in  the  time  of  Law's  frenzy]  said  were 
here  are  reduced  to  a  hundred  cabins  for  the  troops,  irregularly 
placed,  a  storehouse  of  wood,  two  or  three  mean  dwellings,  and 
an  unfinished  warehouse.  This  wild  and  desert  spot  is  still 
nearly  all  covered  with  reeds  and  trees."  But,  he  adds  pro- 
phetically, "  the  day  cannot  be  distant  when  it  may  become  a 
rich  town,  the  capital  of  an  opulent  colony."  At  this  time  the 
province  had  a  total  population,  white  and  black,  of  not  far 
from  five  thousand  five  hundred,  of  which  about  six  hundred 
were  slaves.  Charlevoix  remained  in  New  Orleans  till  July, 
and  then  went  to  Biloxi. 

Peace,  which  had  been  made  with  Spain,  February  17,  1720, 
France  on  ^^^  ^^^  lastcd  f  or  two  ycars,  and  France,  with  Spain's 
the  Gulf.  acquiescence,  held  the  Gulf  shore  westward  from  the 
neighborhood  of  Pensacola  as  far  as  she  could  venture  to  oc- 
cupy.  In  the  previous  August  (1721)  Bienville  had  instructed 
La  Harpe  to  take  possession  of  the  coveted  Bay  of  St.  Bernard 
(Matagorda),  but  in  October  it  had  been  abandoned.  The  sav- 
ages who  dwelt  about  it  had  not  softened  in  their  ferocity  since 
the  days  of  La  Salle,  and  it  was  found  impossible  to  appease 
them. 

To  control  this  coast  and  to  keep  communications  with  the 
Illinois,  neither  Biloxi  nor  Mobile  had  proved  well  situated. 
Now  that  the  peace  had  rendered  them  less  important  as  bul- 
warks against  the  Spaniards  at  Pensacola,  it  was  evident  that 
many  considerations  prompted  the  removal  of  the  seat  of  gov- 
ernment to  some  position  on  the  Great  River.  Something 
within  her  own  capability  needed  to  be  done  if  Louisiana  was 
to  flourish,  for  France  had  of  late  been  very  neglectful  of  colo- 
nial interests.  Unless  matters  mended,  something  little  better 
than  an  independent  freebooting  existence  must  be  occasionally 
dreamed  of.  The  colonists  could  at  least  in  this  way  get  some 
of  the  products  of  enterprise,  now  checked  by  monopolies  and 
other  exactions.    Added  to  this  vacillating  and  neglectful  policy 


Note.  Tlie  opposite  map  is  from  Bowen  and  Gibson's  North  America,  London,  1763,  showing 
the  basin  of  the  Red  River  and  the  Spanish  frontiers ;  and,  east  of  the  Mississippi,  the  country  of 
the  Chickasaws,  Choctaws,  Creeks,  and  Alibamons. 


154  CHARLEVOIX  AND  HIS   OBSERVATIONS. 

of  the  home  government,  the  unpopularity  of  Bienville  and  his 
quarrels  with  Hubert,  the  commissary,  had  not  served  to  make 
prospects  better.  Charlevoix  came  at  a  time  to  see  this,  and 
exercised  his  powers  as  a  peacemaker  to  some  effect. 

For  a  year  or  two,  the   governor  had  been  advocating  the 
removal  of  the  capital,  and  in  1720  he  had  sent  Le 

New  Or- 

leans  laid       Bloud  dc  la  Tour  to  choose  a  site  on  the  Mississippi. 

out.     1720.         .  ^^ 

A  town  was  staked  out,  as  we  have  seen,  and  records 
of  baptisms  were  begun  there  as  early  as  September  10,  1720. 
These  early  days,  as  Charlevoix  found,  were  dismal  ones.  Some 
Swiss  who  had  come  for  garrison  duty  had  been  scattered 
among  the  neighboring  tribes,  the  better  to  feed  them.  They 
brought  disease  with  them  and  found  more  of  it.  Out  of  one 
lot  of  Germans  who  sailed  from  France,  not  a  quarter  survived 
the  voyage.  The  negroes  who  were  brought  from  Guinea  fared 
better,  but  not  much.  Hurricanes  swept  along  the  coast  in  the 
autumn  of  1721,  and  leveled  the  huts  both  at  New  Orleans  and 
Biloxi. 

In  the  spring  of  1722,  while  Charlevoix  was  looking  on,  com- 
jjg^Qj.  missioners  arrived  with  orders  to  transfer  the  gov- 
capitoi^^  ernment  to  New  Orleans.  In  June  the  removal  of 
^^^^'  stores  began,  and  hy  August  Bienville  had  taken  up 

his  residence  in  the  new  capital.  A  fort  was  soon  built  at  the 
Balize,  in  a  position  which,  as  Charlevoix  describes  it,  was  on 
the  edge  of  the  Gulf,  but  which  is  to-day  nine  miles  up  the  pass. 

Charlevoix  was  on  the  ground  in  time  to  understand  the  per- 
plexities which  environed  the  poor  governor  on  all  sides.     The 
news  from  the  Red  River  was  discouraging,  and  Bien- 
River  coun-    viUc  rcsolvcd  to  incrcasc  the  fifty  men  who  constituted 
*'^^'  the  o-arrison  at  Natchitoches  Island.     This  was    ren- 

dered  necessary,  for  the  Spaniards  had  made  good  their  posi- 
tion among  the  Adayes.  Here  they  had  converted  a  mission 
into  an  armed  post,  bringing  up  their  supplies  from  the  Gulf, 
and  Bienville  looked  upon  it  as  a  distinct  threat  to  the  French. 
He  wrote  (December  10,  1721)  to  protest  against  it,  as  an 
unfriendly  interjection  of  alien  power  between  two  French 
posts.     The  Spaniards  maintained  at  this  new  post,  which  was 

Note.     The  opposite  section  of  Mitchell's  great  map  of  1755  shows  the  country  of  the  Cenia, 
and  the  positions  of  the  Adayes. 


156  CHARLEVOIX  AND  HIS  OBSERVATIONS. 

but  seven  leagues  from  Fort  St.  Jean  Baptiste  at  Natchitoches, 
a  hundred  men  and  six  cannon,  with  which  they  cordd  threaten 
the  communications  of  the  French  with  their  more  distant 
post  among  the  Nassonites  at  Cadadaquions. 

These  movements  of  the  French  toward  the  Spaniards  met 
with  scant  appreciation  from  Charlevoix.  "  The  neighborhood 
of  the  Spanish,"  he  says,  "  had  at  all  times  been  a  fatal  allure- 
ment to  the  French,  who  leave  the  best  of  lands  untilled  to 
pursue  a  precarious  trade  with  such  neighbors.  The  neighbor- 
hood of  the  Spaniards  may  have  some  advantages,  but  it  is 
better  that  they  should  approach  us  than  we  go  to  them.  It  is 
not  their  interest  to  drive  us  away.  They  understand,  or  will 
find  out,  that  we  are  the  best  barrier  they  can  desire  against 
the  English." 

At  the  very  date  when  Bienville  was  writing  his  protest  to 
the  Spanish  governor,  he  gave  instructions  to  La 
Harpe,  now  returned  from  his  fruitless  mission  to 
St.  Bernard's  Bay,  to  proceed  up  the  Arkansas,  and  secure,  if 
possible,  some  cattle  from  Mexico.  He  varied  his  mission  by 
searching  for  emeralds,  and  returned  in  May,  1722,  unsuccess- 
ful again. 

Charlevoix  speaks  of  the  ascent  of  the  Arkansas  being  made 
TiieArkan-  ^^^^  difficulty  bccausc  of  its  rapids  and  shoals.  It 
sas  River.  ^^^  ^^^^  ^^^  moutli  of  the  rivcr  that  he  saw  the 
"  sorrowful  ruins  of  Mr.  Law's  grant,  where  nine  thousand 
Germans  were  to  be  sent.  It  is  a  great  pity  they  never  came," 
he  adds,  "  for  there  is  not,  perhaps,  in  Louisiana,  if  w^e  except 
the  Illinois,  a  country  more  fit  for  tillage  and  cattle." 

It  was  just  at  this  time  that  orders  were  received  from  France 
to  build  a  fort  at  the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas  to  protect  the 
line  of  communication  between  New  Orleans  and  Kaskaskia. 
A  crowd  of  palisaded  cabins  soon  sprang  up  on  the  spot  where 
Joutel,  escaping  from  the  assassins  of  La  Salle,  had  come  so 
happily  upon  some  of  Tonty's  men  in  1687. 

Convoys  with  provisions  from  the  Illinois  were  constantly 
coming  down  the  river,  and  it  was  necessary  to  guard  against 
the  famine  which  too  successful  raids  of  prowling  savages  upon 
the  boats  might  easily  occasion,  for  this  country  had  hardly 
been  brought,  except  at  a  few  points,  under  the  subjection  of 
the  priests'  meliorating  influences.  • 


MISSIONS.  157 

Charlevoix,  in  1721,  did  not  find  a  Christian  brother  to  greet 
him  anywhere   on   the    lower  Mississippi,   except   at 

Priests  on 

Yazoo  and  New  Orleans.     "  It  is  five  years,"  he  says,   tiieMissis- 
"  since  a  priest  said  mass  at   the  Natchez,"  and    he 
mentions  that  he  was  called  upon  while  there  to  give  the  sanc- 
tion of  the  church  to  sundry  couples  who  had  already  joined 
themselves  in  marriage. 

The  next  year,  by  orders  issued  in  France  in  May,  1722, 
more  active  missionary  agencies  were  at  work,  and  the  river 
became  the  great  highway  of  the  church.  The  Jesuits  had 
brought  the  tribes  of  the  Illinois  almost  to  a  man  over  to  the 
faith.  "  They  are  almost  all  Christians,"  says  Charlevoix, 
"  mild  in  temper  and  often  loving  towards  the  French." 

To  the  Jesuits  the  future  ecclesiastical  control  of  all  the  coun- 
try north  of  the  Ohio  was  now  assigned,  and  in  the  following 
year  we  find  their  recruits  frequently  passing  up  the  river.  The 
lower  regions  of  the  valley  were  divided  between  the  Carmel- 
ites and  the  Capuchins,  but  before  long  all  fell  under  the  con- 
trol of  the  Capuchins,  who  were  recognized  from  the  Alabama  to 
the  Red  River,  and  up  the  Great  Valley  as  far  as  the  Natchez. 

It  was  upon  the  Natchez  that  all  eyes  were  soon    to  turn. 
They  were  restless,  and  had  never  been  quite   recon-  rp],g 
oiled  to  the  presence   of    the    French.     In  October,   ^^t^hez. 
1723,    Bienville    led   seven    hundred    men    against    them    and 
devastated  two  of  their  villages.     The  time  for  a  more  fearful 
outbreak  was  only  put  off. 

Meanwhile,  Bienville's  enemies  had  brought  about  his  recall 
to  France,    and    Boisbriant   came    down   from    Fort  Bienviiiein 
Chartres  to  take  temporary  command.     On  reaching  ^'^^°'=^- 
France,  Bienville  pressed  his  defense,  and  La  Harpe,  who  sup- 
ports him,  says  that  he  had  laid  up  no  more  than  sixty  thou- 
sand livres  during  his  long  control  in  Louisiana,  and  defies  the 
traducers  of  the  governor  to  point  out  a  more  honest  record. 
Bienville,  however,  failed  of  reinstatement.     There  was  some 
talk  of  making  La  Noiie  his  successor,  but  the  choice  p^rier. 
fell  on  Boucher  de  la  Perriere  (or  Perier),  who  re-  "^*'' 
ceived  the   appointment   August  9,   1726,  and    started   to   his 
province.     Louisiana  was  now  supposed  to  have  a  population  of 
eight  thousand,  of  whom  three  thousand  were  blacks. 


158  CHARLEVOIX  AND  HIS   OBSERVATIONS. 

Before  Perier  started,  the  Company  of  the  Indies  (September 
English  and  ^^'  1726)  revealed  to  him  their  anxiety  about  the 
French  Engrlish  encroachmcnts  on   the  Wabash,  and  the  Re- 

encroacn-  o  ' 

ments.  gent  expressed  a  hope  for  peace,  not  disguising  his  fear 

that  it  might  become  impossible  to  maintain  it.  At  the  same 
time  there  were  apprehensions  on  the  part  of  the  English.  We 
have  an  apt  expression  of  them  in  the  Memoirs  of  John  Ker 
of  Kersland  (London,  1726).  The  grounds  of  this  fear  were 
certainly  exaggerated,  when  Ker  declares  that  France  had  sent 
over  ten  thousand  troops  to  Louisiana,  but  not  perhaps  so  much 
so  when  he  argued  that  France  intended  the  conquest  of  the 
whole  continent.  If  the  Great  Valley  was  what  Ker  represented 
it,  "  of  vast  extent,  with  such  a  temperate,  wholesome  climate 
and  wonderful,  fruitful  soil  to  j)roduce  everything  useful  as 
good  if  not  better  than  any  other  country,"  England  might  well 
The  Jesuits  fight  for  her  sea-to-sea  charters.  The  Jesuits  who 
as  planters,  ^q^q  ^iovf  scttlcd  on  a  grant  at  New  Orleans  were 
beginning  to  show  the  capabilities  of  the  soil  in  their  planta- 
tions of  oranges,  figs,  and  sugar  cane.  It  is  very  likely  that  the 
country  owed  the  indigo  plant  also  to  them.  The  influx  of 
vagabonds,  which  the  holders  of  concessions  under  the  Law 
regime  had  been  sending  over,  was  almost  stopped,  and  new 
social  amenities  were  appearing. 

The  miry  ground,  with  its  stray  growths  of  palmetto,  willow, 
jjg^  and  brake,  the  slab  sides,  bark  roofs,  and  clay  chim- 

Orieans.  ^^yg  q£  ^^vq  cabius.  Scattered  along  streets  which  bore 
the  high-sounding  names  of  the  French  nobility,  made  up  the 
new  capital,  now  becoming  a  more  salubrious  town  since  Perier 
had  completed  his  levee  along  the  river.  The  chief  evils  in 
life  within  it  came  doubtless  from  the  lack  of  personal  loyalty 
to  the  crown  and  country,  which  a  commercial  despotism  had 
done  so  much  to  desti'oy. 

The  salutary  effects  of  domesticity  were  increasing.  The 
The  Ursu-  compauy  had  agreed  with  some  Ursuline  nuns  to  un- 
iines.  1727.  (\ertake  hospital  service  and  maintain  a  school,  and  in 
July,  1727,  they  arrived, — a  body  destined  to  become  one  of 
the  wealthiest  of  the  religious  corporations  of  the  future  com- 
monwealth. A  few  years  later  they  built  a  new  convent,  which 
is  still  standing  as    the    residence  of    the  archbishop,  and   is 


THE    URSU LINES.  159 

perhaps  the  oldest  building  in  the  valley.     The  king  sent  over 
a  body  o£  worthy,  marriageable   girls,  fitting  each  out  with  a 
small  chest  of  clothing.    The  Ursulines  took  the  charge  pjugg  ^  j^ 
of  them,  saw  that  they  were  established  in  virtuous  ^'^s^^^^- 
homes,  and  to  these  "filles  a  la  cassette,"  it  is  said,  some  of  the 
best  Creole  blood  of  to-day  traces  back  its  origin. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

ALONG   THE   APPALACHIANS. 

1720-1727. 

The  concessions  of  the  French  under  the  treaty  of  Utrecht 

(1713),  or  what  the  English  claimed  to  be  their  con- 

utrecht.        cessions,  often  came  back  to  plas^ue  those  Gallic  rivals. 

1713.  1       o 

The  great  gate  of  the  Mississippi  valley  at  the  north- 
east was  in  the  English  opinion  securely  gained  for  them  when 
they  preempted  the  rights  of  the  Iroquois.  To  offset  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  sea-to-sea  charters  of  the  English,  the  French 
simply  made  a  sweeping  pretension  that  the  New  World  in  this 

northern  half  of  it  belonoed  to  France  and  Spain  alone, 

English  and  °  .  ^ 

French  and  that  England  had  no  claim  beyond  what  France 

had  ceded  by  treaty.  Consequently,  in  the  extreme 
French  view,  their  cession  of  Acadia  gave  the  English  their 
sole  legal  possession,  while  the  protection  granted  to  the  Eng- 
lish at  Utrecht  over  the  Iroquois  carried  no  territorial  rights. 
When  it  came  to  a  test,  the  English  cared  for  little  but  the 
right  of  might,  as  the  French  found  out  and  could  have  antici- 
pated. In  the  appendix  of  his  Half  Century  of  Conflict, 
Parkman  prints  two  documents  which  represent  these  French 
Bobfi's  views.     One  is  a  Memoire  by  that  Father  Bobe  al- 

views.  ready  mentioned  as  the   prompter  of  Delisle  (1720), 

and  the  other  is  an  official  representation  (1723)  of  much  tlie 
same  purport.  The  priest  contends  that  the  English  in  the 
treaty  of  St.  Germain  (1632)  restored  their  American  con- 
quests to  France.  Even  if  the  English  did  not  intend  it,  this 
restoration,  he  argues,  in  consideration  of  the  French  claim 
arising  from  the  voyage  of  Verrazano,  covered  all  America 
not  Spanish,  and  so  included  the  entire  range  of  English  colo- 
nies along  the  Atlantic  coast.  It  was  a  part  of  this  restored 
territory  called   Acadia,  from  the  Kennebec  eastward,  which 


THE  ENGLISH  BOUNDS.  161 

had  been  wrested  by  England  from  France  under  the  treaty  of 
1713,  and  that  only  constituted  the  proper  and  legal  possessions 
of  England.  Bobe  now  makes  a  liberal  proposition  which  was 
not  new,  —  for  Lahontan  had  expressed  it  in  his  map  of  1709, 
—  that  by  French  sufferance  merely  the  bounds  of  the  English 
shoidd  run  due  west  from  the  mouth  of  the  Kennebec,  thus 
throwing  Lake  Champlain  into  Canada.  The  line  was  then 
to  turn  south  so  as  to  follow  the  crest  of  the  Alleghanies  to 
Florida.  This  being  accepted  by  England,  France,  says  our 
complacent  priest,  being  generous,  will  live  in  peace  with  her 
neighbor,  provided  as  a  recompense  England  restores  what  lies 
east  of  the  Kennebec,  being  "  Acadia  with  its  ancient  limits," 
to  the  French  crown.  If  the  English,  not  knowing  their  hon- 
orable duty,  refuse  this,  then  the  terrible  power  of  Law's  Mis- 
sissippi Company  is  to  be  brought  to  bear  upon  them  for  their 
temerity !  It  never  occurred  to  the  docile  priest  that  England 
had  an  equally  powerful  South  Sea  Company  to  offset  the  other, 
just  now  in  as  high  a  feather.  Unfortunately  for  Bobe  and  the 
English,  before  a  few  months  had  passed  both  speculations  were 
to  be  classed  among  the  world's  great  failures.  The  English, 
however,  were  in  no  mood  to  abate  any  pretensions.  They  only 
accepted  the  bounds  of  the  Appalachians  as  a  tem-  ,^^^^  English 
porary  necessity.  Moll,  in  his  maps,  was  expressing  thel^°^ 
the  English  assumptions  for  the  time  being.  He  ^°"°'^*- 
stretched  the  western  line  of  the  colonies  along  the  AUeghanies 
northward,  but  bearing  enough  to  the  west  to  strike  the  Great 
Lakes  at  the  eastern  end  of  Erie,  and  so  to  include  the  entire 
region  of  the  Iroquois  tribal  occupation.  Thus  all  rights  were 
denied  the  French  along  the  southern  shore  of  Ontario  and  at 
Niagara.  The  Lords  of  Trade  appreciated  the  situation  and 
memorialized  the  throne  to  prevent  the  weak  posts  of  the 
French  beyond  the  mountains  growing  defiantly  strong. 

Byrd  of  Westover  in  Virginia  looked  with  wonder  on  the 
content  of  the  colonies  to  be  hemmed  in  by  the  mountains. 
"  Our  country,"  he  says,  "  has  now  been  inhabited  more  than 
a  hundred  and  thirty  years,  and  still  we  hardly  know  anything 
of  the  Appalachian  Mountains,  which  are  nowhere  above  two 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  from  the  sea." 

This  English  people,  whom  Colonel  Byrd  thought  so  negli- 
gent of  their  opportunities,  now  numbered,  with  their  foreign 


162  ALONG    THE  APPALACHIANS. 

admixtures,  half  a  million  of  souls.  It  was  a  population  toler- 
The  EngUsh  ^^^1  ^^^^^  comjiactecl  in  New  England,  where  the  cur- 
coiomes.  j.gjj^  increase  was  now  become  the  least,  and  where  the 
spirit  which  prefigured  the  coming  independence  was  most  ar- 
dent. The  New  England  charters  were  already  threatened  by 
the  king,  but  they  found  a  strenuous  defender  in  Jeremy  Dum- 
mer,  then  the  Massachusetts  agent  in  London.  He  claimed 
that  these  charters  were  contracts  which  the  throne  was  bound 
to  respect.  Though  the  monarch  had  formally  granted  the  ter- 
ritory, it  had  really  been  won  by  the  pioneers,  who  had  defended 
it  from  the  French.  The  bill  before  Parliament,  to  which  these 
arguments  were  an  answer,  was  one  introduced  by  the  Board 
of  Trade  for  the  express  purpose  of  making  the  colonies  better 
able  to  confront  the  French.  The  plan  was  to  confederate 
them  under  a  captain-general,  and  at  one  time  there  was  a  pur- 
pose to  send  over  the  Earl  of  Stair  to  fill  that  office.  Various 
Proposals  othcr  plaus  of  union  were  advanced  now  and  later  by 
foruuiou.  Coxe,  Bladen,  and  others, — all  for  the  same  end. 
The  youthful  Turgot  in  France  comprehended  the  drift  of  sen- 
timent when  he  spoke  of  the  "  colonies  like  fruit  clinging  to  the 
tree  only  till  ripe."  Dummer,  too,  forecast  the  future  when  he 
warned  the  government  in  London  that  to  unite  the  colonies  in 
a  vice-royalty  was  the  best  way  to  fit  them  for  future  indepen- 
dence. The  bill  was  withdrawn  and  the  scheme  slumbered ; 
and  when,  in  1723,  Massachusetts  sought  to  unite  with  the 
neighboring  colonies  in  a  struggle  with  the  Indians,  the  Board 
of  Trade  thought  the  project  mutinous  ! 

But  New  England  was  on  the  outskirts  of  the  great  arena. 
Berkeley   had    written    his   verses    on   the    westward 

Berkeley  . 

and  course  of  empire,  and  had  come  to  Newport  with  the 

ultimate  hope  of  founding  a  college  for  savages. 
Franklin  was  making  an  influence  to  surpass  the  pidpit  by 
fashioning  public  opinion  through  the  Neiv  England  Courant. 
When  Jacob  Wendell  placed  the  first  settlement  in  the  Berk- 
shire hills,  in  1725,  and  Fort  Dummer  was  built  at  the  modern 
Brattleboro  in  Vermont  (1721),  New  England  had  reached 
the  western  limits  of  her  home-country,  and  must  wait  a  half 
century  and  more  for  her  later  developments  on  the  Ohio.  Not 
since  the  days,  forty  years  earlier,  when  La  Salle  took  some 
vagrant  Mohegans  down  the  Mississippi,  had  the  New  England 
savages  passed  beyond  Albany  and  the  Mohawks. 


OSWEGO.  163 

Settlements  which  the  Dutch  had  formed  on  the  Hudson,  and 
the  intercourse  which  that  people  had  wisely  regulated  with  the 
neighboring  Indians,  had  come  by  the  transition  of  power  into 
the  hands  of  those  who  fidly  comprehended  the  nature  of  their 
inheritance.     No  one  among  the  supplanting  English  knew  it 
better  than  Cadwallader  Golden.     He  spoke  of  New 
York  as   "  the   only  province    that  can    rival    and  I  the  Indian 
believe  outdo  the  French"  in  the  Indian  trade;  and 
trade  was  on  the  whole  the  most  important   influence  now  at 
work  in  the  struggle   for  a  continent.     In  a  pamphlet  which 
Golden  had  published  in  1724,  on  the   encouragement  of  the 
Indian  trade,  he  had  urged  the  occupation  of  the  country  south 
of  the  Great  Lakes.     It  was  partly  to  aid  such  encouragement, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  make  manifest  how  the  Five  Nations 
could  be  helpful  in  such  schemes,  that  he  set  about  preparing 
a  history  of  those  tribes.     He  hoped  by  this  publication  (New 
York,    1727)   to  instruct  those    English    statesmen  who    had 
shown  supreme  ignorance  of  American  geography,  in  contrast 
to  the  enlightened  apprehensions  of  their  French  rivals.     The 
difference  between  them  was  naturally  much  the  same  as  that 
which  Delisle  with  his  care,  and  Senex  and  Moll  with  their  wild 
conjectures,  had    made    manifest   in  their   respective 
maps.     There  seemed  sometimes  in  this  application  of  of  discem- 
intellectual  discernment  in  American  matters  a  pre- 
determined  purpose  on  the  part  of  the  insular  English  to  go 
wrong  if  possible.      When  they  reprinted  Golden's  book,    in 
London,  in  1747  and  in  1750,  the  text  was  so  perverted  as  to 
convey  on  some  points  little  conception  of  what  the  author  had 
written. 

The  influence  of  Joncaire  among  the  Onondagas  and  Sene- 
cas  has  frequently  been  mentioned.  It  might  have  led  to  a 
revulsion  among  the  confederated  Iroquois,  if  they  had  not  been 
brought  to  a  treaty  at  Gonestoga  in  1721.  But  far  more  im- 
portant for  the  English  interest  was  the  flocking  of 
English  traders  to  Oswego.  That  little  post  in  the 
busy  season  was  redolent  with  the  smell  of  furs,  and  confused 
with  a  Babel  of  tongues.  Nothing  coidd  disturb  the  merchants 
of  Montreal  more  than  this  intercepting  at  Oswego  of  the 
annual  flotillas  from  the  distant  waters.    The  next  year  (1722), 


/ 


164  ALONG    THE  APPALACHIANS. 

the  southern  governors,  Spotswood  of  Virgmia,  and  Keith  of 
Pennsylvania,  sought  to  settle  with  the  Iroquois  their  more 
immediate  grievances.  The  confederates  agreed  not  to  extend 
their  southern  raids  beyond  the  Potomac,  and  even  then  to 
carry  their  warpaths  on  the  western  slope  of  the  AUeghanies 
only. 

At  this  time  the  Palatines  were  pushing  farther  west  and 
were  settling  at  German  Flats  (1723),  near  the  portage  to 
Oswego.  The  air  was  no  longer  wild  with  the  savage  whoop 
along  the  western  route,  and  the  Albany  traders  began  to  take 
The  English  courage  and  to  respond  to  the  invitations  of  the  In- 
wlstern  diaus  ou  the  Wabash  to  bring  their  packs  among 
tribes.  them.     The  confidence  was  reciprocal,  and  presently 

a  band  of  Mackinac  Indians  appeared  at  Albany.  Along  a 
route  of  twelve  hundred  miles  they  had  resisted  the  efforts  of 
the  French  to  turn  them  back. 

A  sharp  clash  was  near  at  hand.  Vaudreuil  and  Burnet 
Vaudreuii  wcrc  exchanging  diplomatic  notes  over  Oswego.  Words 
and  Burnet,  ^gpg  equal  in  the  contest ;  but  behind  argument  there 
was  great  disparity.  The  Canadian  governor  had  a  popula- 
tion of  less  than  thirty  thousand  at  his  back.  The  English 
governor  stood  for  the  rights  of  twelve  or  fifteen  times  as  many, 
who  were  scattered  along  the  Atlantic  seaboard.  It  was  this 
vast  preponderance  in  the  Britons'  favor  which  made  Pontchar- 
train  think  the  time  was  not  far  distant  —  and  it  was  not  — 
when  Canada  could  be  pushed  to  the  wall. 

The  post  which  Joncaire  had  established  at  Niagara  as  a 
counterfoil  to  Oswego  was  become  stronger  and  more 

Oswego  and        ^  .  i-t^ti  t  ni 

New  Eng-  tlireatcnuig  to  the  JLnghsh,  and  to  draw  the  attention 
of  the  English  from  it,  Vaudreuil  kept  up  the  bewil- 
dering attacks  along  the  New  England  frontiers.  These  were 
the  orders  of  the  government  in  Paris,  which  thought  it  less  a 
risk  than  a  direct  attempt  to  drive  the  English  from  Oswego, 
as  the  Canadian  governor  persistently  urged.  Vaudreuil  was 
firm  in  the  conviction  that  the  onset  upon  Oswego  should  not 
be  longer  delayed.  He  was  not  suffered  to  attempt  it.  He 
Vaudreuil  died,  Octobcr  10,  1725,  an  octogenarian,  with  a  head 
died.  1725.  g^-jj  clear,  and  with  the  zeal  of  youth.  He  had  been 
the  front  of  the  Quebec  government  for  twenty-one  years.  He 
had  seen  the  devastating  raids  of  the  Iroquois  along  the  St. 


TREATY   OF  1726.  165 

Lawrence.  He  had  made  such  reprisals  as  his  hopes  to  win 
over  the  confederates  indicated,  and  the  New  Englanders  won- 
dered why  they  and  not  the  New  Yorkers  were  the  victims  of 
his  activity.  It  was  he  who  proposed  that  Niagara  should  be 
strengthened  with  a  stone  fort,  and  this  was  hardly  done  when 
Beauharnois  launched  two  vessels  on  Ontario. 

Meanwhile  the  English  had  brought  the  Senecas,  Cayugas, 
and  Onondagas  to  a  new  treaty  at  Albany,  in  Septem-  Treaty  of 
ber,  1726.    These  tribes  had  endeavored  to  prevent  the   ^""''• 
French  strengthening  Niagara,  but  failing  in  that  they  were  the 
more  ready  to  play  into  the  hands   of  the    English.     By  this 
pact  they  confirmed  what  was  claimed  to  be  an  earlier  cession 
of  the  land  north  of  Lake  Erie.     They  also  granted  a  strip 
sixty  miles  wide  along  the  southern  bank  of  Ontario,  including 
the  post  at  Oswego,  and  extending  to  the  modern  Cleveland  on 
Lake  Erie.     They  acknowledged  their  lands  to  be  "  protected 
and  defended  for  the  use  of  us  "  by  the  English  king.     It  may 
be  a  question  if  the  Indian  consciousness  quite  compre- 
hended the  interpretation  which  the  English  intended  strength- 
by  those  words.     This  done,  Burnet  strengthened  the 
fort  at  Oswego,  and  sent  eighty  soldiers  to  defend  the  workmen, 
while  two  hundred  armed  traders  assembled  there. 

In  August,  1727,  Begon,  the  Canadian  intendant,  demanded 
its  evacuation,  on  the  ground  that  the  treaty  of  Utrecht  did  not 
allow  either  party  to  encroach  upon  disputed  territory  until 
commissioners  had  established  the  bounds  between  them.  The 
French,  however,  were  not  prepared  to  go  farther  than  to  protest ; 
nor  did  Burnet,  in  denying  the  rights  of  the  French  to  Niagara, 
act  more  boldly.  The  English  governor  disavowed  any  other 
purpose  than  trade,  and  in  defending  his  position  at  Oswego 
fell  back  on  the  provision  of  the  treaty,  which  allowed  each  to 
trade  with  the  Indians,  and  either  to  go  to  the  native  villages, 
or  to  have  the  savages  come  to  established  posts. 

To  be  prepared  for  the  worst,  it  was  not  long  before  a  large 
force  was  put  into  the  Oswego  fort.     The  advantage 
which    Burnet,   largely  through   the    expenditure    of  Albany  with 

■I.  (•.  iTji  1  .  Montreal. 

nis  own  lortune,  Jiad  thus  secured  was  soon  in  some 
degree  neutralized  by  the  intrigue  of  the  Albany  merchants, 
who  obtained  from    the    crown   a  reversal   of    the   jrovernor's 
order  which  had  prohibited  their  trade  with  Montreal.     This 


\ 


166  ALONG   THE  APPALACHIANS. 

change  opened  the  way  to  further  intrigues  of  the  French  with 
the  Iroquois. 

The  Scotch-Irish  element  had  now  begun  to  strengthen  rap- 
The  Scotch-  '^^^Y  throughout  the  English  colonies.  Emigration 
Irish.  from   Ulster  was   become   a   habit,  "  spreading   like 

a  contagious  distemper."  It  is  said  that,  for  several  years 
after  the  second  quarter  of  the  century  began,  something  like 
twelve  thousand  of  this  people  were  landed  yearly  at  the  Atlan- 
tic seaports.  They  all  possessed  a  tendency  to  push  inland  after 
arriving.  In  Pennsylvania,  they  drifted  towards  those  regions 
where  the  boundary  controversies  with  Maryland  and  Virginia 
were  still  unsettled,  and  in  these  disputes  they  were  to  become 
important  agents.  In  1724-25,  three  thousand  of  them  are 
said  to  have  landed  in  Philadelphia.  It  was  computed  that  in 
the  single  year  1729  five  thousand  of  them  entered  Pennsyl- 
vania. This  great  influx  put  the  Quaker  element  of  the  prov- 
ince in  a  decided  minority,  but  it  was  many  years  later  before 
the  Society  of  Friends  ceased  to  have  a  predominant  power  in 
the  political  machinery  of  the  province.  Already  James  Logan, 
representing  the  conservative  Quakers,  was  looking  to  Parlia- 
ment for  relief  from  what  seemed  an  impending  inundation  of 
this  hardy  stock. 

This  stream  of  new-comers  forced  the  settlements  farther  and 
Tjje  farther  west ;  and  the  pioneers  were  opening  the  way 

Md'^conrad  ^^  ^^^  mouutaiu  gaps  and  toward  the  vaUey  of  Vir- 
weiser.  ginia.  Earlier,  in  1723,  the  Palatines,  who  had  been 
settled  on  the  Mohawk,  were  seeking  freer  service  in  Pennsyl- 
vania. One  famous  among  the  directors  of  the  western  progress 
in  later  years,  Conrad  Weiser,  now  a  vigorous  man  of  thirty- 
three,  proficient  in  the  Maqua  tongue,  and  knowing  the  Indian 
character  well,  had  cast  in  his  lot  among  them  in  1729.  Mixed 
in  this  human  drift  toward  the  upper  Susquehanna,  and  making 
head  toward  the  mountain  gaps,  were  a  few  New 
from  Englanders.     They  were  representatives  of  Connecti- 

Connecticut.  °  ,  ,  r>iii'i' 

cut  come  to  possess  themselves  or  lands  claimed  in 
opposition  to  the  charter  of  Penn.  These  lands  were  held  to 
be  within  the  sea-to-sea  rights  as  established  by  the  Connecticut 
charter  of  1662,  and  beyond  the  interjected  claim  of  the  Duke 
of  York  along  the  Hudson,  granted  by  his  royal  brother   in 


THE    VALLEY  OF   VIRGINIA.  167 

1664  and  1674.     These  interlopers,  as  Penn's  people  thought 
them,  were  a  sturdy  race,  later  to  be  heard  from. 

The  Delawares,   once    the    savage  denizens  of   this  region, 
had  already  begun  to  follow  the  flying  game  over  the 
mountains,  and  had  found  new  hunting-grounds  on   Delaware 
the  Ohio.     The  Pennsylvania  packmen  were  not  far  Pennsyiva- 
behind,  and  they  soon  encountered  on  the  Alleghany 
the  French  traders.     The  two  rivals  were  each  anxious  to  dis- 
cover the  other's  routes   and  purposes,   and  the   secretary  of 
Pennsylvania,  in  his  reports  to  the  Lords  of  Trade,  was  com- 
plaining that  the  French  were  pressing  even  within  the  limits 
of  the  province's  charter. 

As  to  the  more  remote  regions  beyond  the  forks  of  the  Ohio, 
New  York  was  ali-eady  pressing  her  claims  derived  uieohio 
from  the  Iroquois,  in  order  to  keep  out  the  traders  of  ""^siou. 
the  other  colonies.  She  held  that  the  parliamentary  acts  of 
1624,  1664,  and  1681,  which  made  this  region  crown  lands, 
were  enough,  even  without  her  Iroquois  claim,  to  bar  them  out. 
But  the  urgent  question,  after  all,  was  whether  the  activity  of 
the  French  was  not  of  itself  enough  to  keep  the  English  out. 
Coxe  was  expressing  the  fear  that  the  better  knowledge  which 
the  French  possessed  of  the  mountain  passes  might,  "  in  con- 
junction with  the  French  of  the  Meschacebe,"  enable  them  to 
"  insult  and  harass  these  colonies."  There  was  one  favorable 
condition,  however,  —  favorable,  as  he  thought,  to  the  British, 
in  that  the  Chicazas  (Chickasaws)  were  "  good  friends  of  the 
English."  Their  country  extended  to  the  Mississippi,  and 
took  in  the  valley  of  the  Tennessee,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
often  marked  in  contemporary  maps  as  the  traders'  route. 

It  was  ten  years  since,  from  one  of  the  passes  of  the  Blue 
Ridge,  Spotswood,  with  his  Knights  of  the  Golden  pirgt  set- 
Horseshoe,  had  looked  down  into  the  valley  of  the  shinandoah 
Shenandoah.  If  we  may  safely  accept  the  story,  the  ^^^''• 
first  settler  on  the  river-bank  of  that  leafy  basin  came  in  1726, 
when  a  Welshman,  Morgan  by  name,  built  a  house  beyond  the 
Blue  Ridge.  It  is  possible  that,  about  the  same  time,  some 
Germans  from  Germanna,  in  the  lower  country  of  Virginia, 
where  Spotswood  had  seated  a  colony  of  that  people,  had  also 
made  an  entrance  into  the  valley.     Two  adventurers,  Mackey 


168  ALONG   THE  APPALACHIANS. 

and  Sailing,  are  reported  to  have  wandered  before  this  through 
Mackey  and  ^^^  vallej.  Sailing  was  captured  by  the  Cherokees, 
Sailing.  ^^^  ^g^g  \\e\(\.  by  them  for  some  years  as  a  prisoner. 
Experiencing  a  variety  of  vicissitudes,  he  was  passed  from  them 
to  Kaskaskia,  thence  to  the  Spaniards,  and  again  to  the  French 
in  Canada.  After  an  absence  of  six  years,  he  joined  the  Eng- 
lish once  more  in  New  York. 

The  Cherokees,  the  cause  of  such  trials,  dominated  all  this 
Tjjg  western  region  south  of  the  Iroquois  and  west  of  the 

and  th^^^^  mountains.  They  had,  in  1721,  ceded  to  the  Carolini- 
traders.  ^^^  ^  tract  lying  east  of  the  Alleghanies  and  between 
the  Edisto  and  Congaree  rivers,  —  the  earliest  English  acqui- 
sition from  them,  stretching  up  the  Carolina  streams.  The  paths 
of  the  traders  who  sought  the  Cherokee  villages  from  Virginia 
and  the  Carolinas  united  in  what  is  now  the  extreme  northwest 
of  South  Carolina  among  the  broken  hills  of  the  southern  end 
of  the  Alleghanies.  The  Virginians  already,  in  1728,  had  a 
considerable  pack-horse  traffic  with  the  Cherokees  along  this 
path,  and  there  had  been  an  intermittent  trade  with  them  car- 
ried on  by  the  Carolinians  for  three  quarters  of  a  century. 
Coxe,  in  1722,  speaks  of  their  centre  of  trade  being  only  sixty 
miles  distant  from  the  Carolina  outposts,  and  says  that  the 
English  are  "  always  very  kindly  entertained  by  them."  But 
the  French  were  not  altogether  deficient  in  influence  among 
them,  and  both  the  Cherokees  and  Creeks  were  at  times  objects 
of  solicitude  in  Carolina. 

The  trail  from  Virginia  was  a  circuitous  one.  William  Byrd 
The  Virginia  ^f  Wcstovcr  speaks  of  its  five  hundred  miles  as  most 
Byrd^of  likely  almost  double  the  necessary  distance  if  the  As- 
westover.  gembly  would  but  order  surveys  to  see  if  it  could  be 
shortened.  Byrd's  History  of  the  Dividing  Line  is  one  of  the 
few  readable  accounts  which  have  come  down  to  us  of  the  life 
and  sights  of  this  period.  He  expresses  the  inquisitiveness  of 
an  active  mind  when  he  says,  "It  is  strange  that  our  woodsmen 
have  not  had  curiosity  enough  to  inform  themselves  more  ex- 
actly of  [this  region]  ;  and  it  is  stranger  still  that  the  govern- 
ment has  never  thought  it  worth  while  [to  incur]  the  expense 
of  making  an  accurate  survey  of  the  mountains,  that  we  might 
be  masters  of  that  natural  fortification  before  the  French,  who 
in  some  places  have  settlements  not  very  distant  from  it."     It 


CAROLINA. 


169 


was  rather  striking-  how,  in  all  such  statements,  what  was  known 
to  the  traders  entered  so  little  into  the  sum  of  the  common 
knowledge  pertaining  to  the  mountains  and  to  what  they  shut 
off. 


[From  JefFerys'  American  Atlas,  showing  the  Indian  trail  from  the  Shenandoah 
country  to  the  Cherokee  country.     Tooley's  Creek  is  the  head  of  the  Holston 

River.] 

Joshua  Gee,  in   his  tract  on  the  English  trade,  speaks  of 
Carolina  as  "  a  noble  colony,  the  most  improvable  of  joshua  Gee 
any  of  our  colonies;"  but  he  regards  it  as  "liable  to  oi^carouna. 
be  overrun  by  the  French  and  Spaniards  for  want  of  a  suf- 
ficient protection."      Referring  to  the   French   encroachments 


170  ALONG    THE  APPALACHIANS, 

beyond  the  mountains,  he  adds  :  "If  we  have  any  sense  of  the 
value  of  that  commodious  tract  of  land,  it  ought  to  put  us  upon 
securing  to  ourselves  such  excellent  colonies  which  may,  if 
properly  improved,  bring  this  nation  a  very  great  treasure  ;  and 
at  least  build  some  forts  on  the  Appalachian  Mountains,  to 
secure  us  the  rights  of  the  mines  contained  in  them  ;  to  protect 
the  Indian  and  skin  trade ;  and  to  preserve  the  navigation  to 
ourselves  of  those  great  rivers  which  have  their  fountains  in 
the  said  hills,  and  empty  themselves  through  Carolina,  Virginia, 
Maryland,  etc.,  into  the  Virginia  Sea." 

In  1721,  it  was  estimated  that  lying  between  Carolina  and 
the  French  on  the  Alabama  and  Mississippi  there  were 
southern  Something  over  nine  thousand  Indian  warriors,  of 
whom  nearly  thirty-five  hundred  formerly  traded  with 
the  English,  but  were  now  drawn  into  the  French  interests. 
The  French  were  likewise  thought  to  be  in  a  fair  way  to  win 
over  about  two  thousand  who  were  now  neutral.  Against  about 
fifty-four  hundred  who  either  were  at  present  or  were  likely 
to  become  hostile,  the  English  could  count  on  the  friendship 
of  nearly  four  thousand  Cherokees  dwelling  along  the  Appala- 
chians. 

The  danger  to  Carolina  lay  in  the  opportunity  which  the 
Dangers  of  rivcrs  cast  of  the  mountains  offered  for  hostile  de- 
caroima.  sceuts  if  the  Clicrokees  ceased  to  form  a  barrier. 
The  greater  danger  was  by  the  Altamaha.  This  risk  had  been 
represented  to  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  they  had  urged  the 
government  to  dispatch  troops  to  Charleston  and  to  build  forts 
on  the  rivers. 

After  Pensacola  had  been  finally  confirmed  to  Spain,  in 
1721,  it  was  held  in  Carolina  that  the  French  could  find  an 
easy  route  from  Mobile  north  till  they  struck  and  then  de- 
scended the  Altamaha.  If  they  should  do  this,  "  it  would  be 
the  most  fatal  blow  yet  to  his  Majesty's  interests." 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  RIV ALKIES   OF  FRANCE,   ENGLAND,   AND  SPAIN. 
1730-1740. 

In  1730,  Montesquieu  had  predicted  that  England  would  be 
the  earliest  of  the  western  nations  to  be  abandoned  by 
her  colonies.     He  little  anticipated  that  France  would  colonies  in 
in  reality  be  the  first  to  be  bereft  of  hers.     Just  at  a 
time  when  France  had  determined  to  restrict  the  English  to 
the  seaward  slope  of  the  Appalachians,  in  the  hope  of  sharing 
the  greater  sj^aces  of  the  New  World  with  Spain,  his  Catholic 
majesty  and  the  English  king  were  formulating  policies  which 
were  to  deprive  those  monarchs  of  their  American  de-  ^he  sugar 
pendencies.     It  was  the  production  of    sugar  which  *'^'^®" 
was  to  be  used  in  these  magisterial  ways.     Joshua  Gee,  a  con- 
temporary English  economist,  was   in   1731    urging  upon  his 
government  to  follow  the  French  practice  of  sending  vagrants 
to  the  colonies,  since   by  the  "  incredible  numbers  "   of  them 
which  France  had  sent  to  the  Mississippi  she  had  established 
a  successful  rivalry  in  the  exportation  of  sugar.     "  If  once  the 
French  can  bring  their  settlements,"  he  adds,  "to  bear  upon 
the  back  of  ours,  along  that  most  fertile  valley  which  is  watered 
with  the  river  Overbachee  [Wabash]  and  the  great  river  Ohio, 
we  may  expect  they  will  gain  a  great  part  of  the  tobacco  trade 
also." 

It  was  observed  in  London  that  the  non-resident  planters  of 
the  British  Sugar  Islands  in  the  West  Indies  were  accustomed 
to  spend  money  lavishly.  The  inference  was  natural  that  to 
foster  the  production  of  that  staple  woidd  bring  more  money 
still  to  the  mother  country.  The  result  was  the  passage  of  par- 
liamentary measures  which,  in  aiding  the  sugar  planters,  bore 
hard  on  the  Atlantic  colonies,  since  the  West  Indies  trade  of 
Boston  and  Philadelphia  was  thereby  forced  to  make  a  circuit 


172    RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

through  the  British  islands  for  the  benefit  of  the  English  mer- 
chants.    The  colonial  merchants  were  too  active  and 

The  English       i         .     i  • 

Pariiment      the  Atlantic  coast  too  long  to  insure  an  exact  or  even 
colonial         general   compliance    with    such   restrictive  measures, 

commerce.  .  .       •         .  rri 

but  any  coercive  attempt  was  an  irritation.  The 
Viscount  Bury  and  other  apologists  have  asserted  that  imperial 
orders,  the  subject  of  colonial  jeers,  and  with  difficulty  en- 
forced, could  not  have  been  oppressive ;  but  they  forget  that 
vexatious  and  inoperative  legislation  is  sometimes  the  most 
irritating. 

The  liquor  question  in  our  recent  sociological  days  Is  one 
The  influ-  mainly  of  domestic  concern ;  but  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
ence  of  rum.  ^^^^.y  ^^  ^j^'g  continent  it  affected  the  destiny  of  peo- 
ples. In  the  rival  designs  for  the  possession  of  the  Great  Valley, 
rum  —  and  largely  New  England  rum  —  played  an  important 
jjart.  It  was  more  than  a  calumet  in  the  intercourse  of  white 
and  savage.  Western  progress  as  tracked  by  successive  pur- 
chases of  lands  was  a  chronicle  of  rum.  "  Plenty  of  wine  and 
punch  was  given  to  the  Indians,"  is  the  usual  accompaniment  of 
a  deed.  Not  a  victory  but  the  pale-face  and  his  red  ally  quaffed 
a  glass.  "  You  tell  us  you  have  beat  the  French,"  said  a 
sachem.  "If  so  you  must  have  taken  a  great  deal  of  rum  from 
them,  and  can  better  spare  us  some  of  that  hot  liquor  to  make 
us  rejoice  with  you  in  the  victory."  The  record  reads:  "The 
governor  and  commissioners  ordered  a  dram  of  rum  to  be  given 
to  each,  in  a  small  dram-glass,  which  the  governor  called  a 
French  glass."  The  record  of  a  later  day  says  that  the  In- 
dians found  the  French  glasses  "  unfortunate,"  referring  to 
their  diminutive  size.  "  We  now  desire  you  will  give  us  some 
in  English  glasses,"  said  the  unsated  savage.  The  governor 
turned  it  to  good  account :  "  We  are  glad  to  hear  you  have 
such  a  dislike  for  what  is  French.  They  cheat  you  in  your 
glasses  as  well  as  in  everything  else."  The  entry  closes  with 
the  statement  that  they  all  had  some  rum  "  in  some  middle- 
sized  glasses." 

A  French  Jesuit  complained  that  an  Indian  would  be  bap- 
tized ten  times  a  day  for  a  pint  of  brandy.  "  All  the  imhajDpi- 
ness  that  befalls  you,"  said  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania  at 
an  Indian  council,  "  is  generally  owing  to  the  abuse  of  that 
destructive  liquor,  rum,  of  which  you  are  so  fond  ;  "  but  there 


THE   TRADE  IN  RUM.  173 

was  very  little  beyond  futile  injunctions  to  prevent  the  mischiev- 
ous trader  carrying  it  to  the  Indian  villages.  Even  in  their 
councils,  when  the  chiefs  reprehended  the  traffic  and  its  effect 
upon  their  wayward  youngsters,  and  solemnly  vowed  to  break 
every  cask  brought  over  the  mountains,  they  were  seldom  averse 
to  being  refreshed  at  the  trading-house.  Indeed,  there  were 
laws  of  trade  that  no  righteous  indignation  of  white  or  savage 
could  stay,  for  by  such  laws  the  Indian  got  more  rum  for  his 
skins  from  the  English  than  he  could  get  of  brandy  from  the 
French.  Conrad  Weiser  at  one  time  told  the  Indians  on  the 
Ohio,  who  were  complaining  that  the  English  traders  brought 
rum  to  their  villages,  that  they  themselves  "  sent  down  their 
skins  by  the  traders  to  buy  rum.  You  go  yourselves  down  and 
bring  back  horse-loads  of  strong  liquor.  Beside  this  you  never 
agree  about  it.  One  will  have  it ;  the  other  won't  have  it,  — 
though  there  are  very  few  of  these  last ;  and  a  third  says,  We 
will  have  it  cheaper.  This  last  we  believe  speaks  out  of  his 
heart,"  and  the  recorder  adds,  "  Here  they  laughed."  Rum,  in 
fact,  was  the  main  prop  of  the  English  trade,  and  the  distiller- 
ies of  New  England  got  their  full  share  of  the  profit.  It  mat- 
tered little  whether  the  Yankee  product  passed  up  the  Hudson 
to  Albany,  and  so  clandestinely  reached  the  merchants  of  Mon- 
treal and  competed  with  French  brandy ;  or  by  an  alternative 
channel  found  its  way  to  the  Delaware  and  Chesapeake  Bay, 
and  the  pack-horse  of  the  trader  bore  it  over  the  AUeghanies. 
There  were  passages  farther  south  perhaps  more  effective.  "  A 
great  part  of  the  molasses  from  the  Dutch  and  French  islands," 
says  a  contemporary  tract,  "  imported  into  Rhode  Island,  Mas- 
sachusetts Bay,  etc.,  is  distilled  into  rum  and  afterwards  shipped 
by  them  into  Virginia,  Carolina,"  etc.  In  this  traffic  the  dis- 
tillers of  New  England  were  using  yearly  some  twenty  thousand 
hogsheads  of  molasses.  To  conform  to  the  law  passed  in  the 
interests  of  the  Sugar  Islands,  and  ship  it  through  English  ports, 
with  increased  cost  of  duties  and  transportation,  was  a  burden, 
when  not  shirked,  well  calculated  to  make  the  mei-chants  of 
Boston  and  Newjjort  uneasy.  The  fact  was  that  besides  being 
a  primary  cause  of  western  progress,  rum  was  likely  to  prove  a 
contingent  influence  for  American  independence.  The  more 
rum  the  more  beaver,  and  when  the  British  Parlia-  The  beaver 
ment  listened  to  Old-Country  felt-makers  and  made  *'^^^^- 


174    RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

it  punishable  for  the  colonists  to  wear  any  covering  but  those 
furnished  by  the  English  furriers,  we  find  hats  and  rum  work- 
ing out  the  great  problem  together.  Parliament  was  making 
these  two  products  lawful  commodities  only  by  their  going 
through  England.  It  would  have  been  hard  to  patrol  the  Alle- 
ghanies  with  excisemen  ;  and  skins  and  rum  passed  and  repassed, 
and  there  was  free  trade  across  the  mountain  barrier,  while  it 
was  embarrassed  on  the  coast. 

Nothing  at  the  north  was  shaping  this  traffic  in  the  colonial 
interests  more  than  the  English  post  at  Oswego,  and 

Oswego  and  ii-r->ii  ^ 

Fort  Fred-     nothing  angcrcd  the  J^rench  more  than  the  mamte- 

erick.    1731.  c     i  •  t  -,  i        i  i       t-^ 

nance  ot  that  station.  In  order  to  checkmate  the  Eng- 
lish, and  to  place  themselves  in  the  line  of  communication 
between  Albany  and  Montreal,  the  French  now  advanced  along 
Lake  Champlain.  We  have  seen  that  under  the  French  claims 
the  southern  bounds  of  Canada  ran  west  from  the  mouth  of  the 
Kennebec,  and  this  threw  Champlain  almost  entirely  within 
their  limits.  Crown  Point,  or,  as  the  French  termed  it,  Scalp 
Point,  thus  became  for  the  first  time  a  prize  in  the  rival  con- 
tentions of  French  and  English,  when  the  Canadians  began 
here,  in  1731,  the  erection  of  Fort  Frederick.  This  post,  accord- 
ingly, was  a  direct  threat  against  the  Iroquois,  who  laid  claim  to 
the  region  of  the  lake,  and  a  danger  to  the  English,  who  saw  in 
it  a  possible  movement  which  hazarded  the  connection  of  New 
England  and  New  York.  Late  in  the  summer  of  1731,  two 
Dutchmen  came  to  Albany  from  Canada,  and  reported  the  prog- 
ress of  the  fort.  They  added  that  in  the  spring  the  French 
intended  to  take  possession  of  Irondequoit  Bay,  on  the  southern 
side  of  Ontario,  and  so  flank  Oswego  on  the  west  as  Fort  Fred- 
erick did  on  the  east. 

Nothing  had  of  late  occurred  to  arouse  the  English  more. 
French  Logaii  scut  from  Pennsylvania  his  signal  of  alarm  to 
Lak"%°ham-  Parliament.  Rip  van  Dam  in  New  York  appealed 
plain.  £qj,  support  on  the  one  hand  to  Belcher  of  Massachu- 

setts, and  on  the  other  to  Gordon  of  Pennsylvania.  Protests 
were  made  in  Paris  by  the  British  ambassador.  Nevertheless, 
the  work  at  Crown  Point  went  on.  There  was  planted  at  the 
same  time  through  the  adjacent  country  by  manorial  grants  a 
feudal  sj)irit,  contrary  to  English  habit.     The  region  was  laid 


THE  SHAWNEES.  175 

out  in  seigneuries,  parceled  out  without  recompense  in  a  coun- 
try that  the  Iroquois  called  their  own,  while  the  English  claimed 
it  under  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  as  being  within  their  jurisdiction. 
These  surveys  laid  the  foundations  of  disputes  of  title  which  it 
fell  to  New  York  to  settle  in  vindication  of  her  own  right  after 
the  treaty  of  Paris  in  1763. 

The  alarm  at  the  English  agitation  threw  Canada  into  solici- 
tude lest  the  occupation  of  Crown  Point  should  incite  new 
attacks  upon  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  English,  however,  had 
enough  to  do  elsewhere,  and  the  French  were  suffered  to  go  on 
strengthening  their  post,  and  finally  (1737)  to  put  an  armed 
sloop  on  the  lake.  It  was  nearly  ten  years  from  the  date  of 
the  first  occupation  of  Crown  Point  before  Fort  Frederick  was 
pronounced  complete. 

The  disposition  of  the  Shawnees  had  become  a  growing  fac- 
tor in  the  problem  of  western  progress  for  the  Eng-  ^j^g 
lish.  These  Indians  —  or  such  of  them  as  were  not  sbawnees. 
nomadic  —  had  lived  for  some  time,  while  their  villages  were 
on  the  Susquehanna,  in  a  sort  of  subjection  to  the  Iroquois. 
During  this  period  the  confederates  watched  their  wards  from 
Shamokin,  at  the  forks  of  that  river,  where  they  kept  a  repre- 
sentative chieftain  to  control  them.  The  Shawnees  later  claimed 
that  they  were  forced  across  the  AUeghanies  because  they  would 
not  join  the  confederates  in  war  against  the  English.  They 
were  certainly  restless  in  being  what  was  termed  "  j)etticoated  " 
by  the  Iroquois,  and  so  sought  friendly  relations  with  some 
Delawares  whom  they  found  living  on  the  waters  of  the  Alle- 
ghany. This  took  place  in  1732,  a  period  of  jDcace  flecked 
with  a  cloud  of  danger  on  Lake  Champlain. 

The  French,  meanwhile,  were  assuring  the  Shawnees  in  their 
new  Ohio  home  that  the  hatchet  was  buried.  In  May,  1732, 
Edmund  Cartlidge  wrote  from  the  Alleghany  valley  to  Gov- 
ernor Gordon  of  Pennsylvania :  "  The  French  seem  very  kind 
and  courteous  for  the  present ;  but  how  long  it  may  hold  I 
know  not.  The  French  coming  to  settle  here,  there  is  more 
necessity  for  the  better  regidation  of  the  Indian  trade,  for  the 
French  will  take  all  advantages  against  us  to  insinuate  with 
the  Indians  in  order  to  lessen  their  esteem  for  us."  When  the 
Shawnees,  in  September,  1732,  sent  a  deputation  to  Philadel- 


176     RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

phia,  and  its  members  were  asked  why  their  tribe  had  crossed 
the  mountains,  and  why  their  chief  went  so  often  to  Montreal, 
they  protested  it  was  with  no  evil  intent  towards  the  English. 

That  the  Shawnees  did  go  to  the  French,  the  Pennsylvania 
traders  were  sure.  These  mongrel  packmen  made  the 
syivauia  most  of  tlic  peaceful  times,  and  were  now  swarming 
over  the  barrier  ridges  to  pursue  a  trade  always  more 
or  less  nefarious.  It  was  their  custom  to  give  the  savages  large 
credit  in  the  autumn.  When  they  exacted  payment  in  the 
spring,  a  winter  of  rum-drinking  had  brought  the  poor  debtors 
nigh  unto  destitution.  This  "trusting"  process  was  so  common 
hereabouts  that,  according  to  a  memorial  of  some  traders 
who  had  suffered  by  French  blandishments  interfering  with 
the  spring  payments,  it  was  termed  "  Alleghany ing  "  the  poor 
Indians. 

These  traders  were  at  this  day  reporting  that  the  French 
were  building  a  log  fort  near  the  Ohio,  and  a  certain  Canadian, 
Cavelier  by  name,  was  said  to  come  year  after  year  among  the 
tribes  on  the  Alleghany  to  entice  them  to  trade  with  Montreal. 

The  Iroquois,  through  that  portion  of  them  dwelling  on  the 
The  Ohio,   and  known   as  Mingoes,  were  another  source 

Mingoes.  q£  troublc  to  the  English,  who  trusted  the  Shawnees. 
The  Mingoes  had  i.  full  share  of  the  Iroquois  longing  for  room, 
and  were  determined  to  push  the  Shawnees  south  of  the  Ohio.' 
The  Shawnees  had  long  been  wanderers,  and  they  were  not 
much  averse  to  getting  beyond  the  scrutiny  of  their  quondam 
masters. 

The  French  met  the  Mingoes,  as  they  had  met  the  Shawnees, 
with  fair  speeches  ;  but  the  Iroquois  were  little  inclined  to 
brook  the  presence  of  the  French  as  far  east  as  the  Alleghany, 
and  the  French  saw  in  this  Mingo  aversion  the  instigation  of 
the  English.  The  ultimate  question  for  the  rival  whites,  as 
well  as  for  the  intermediary  natives,  was  :  Who  should  supply 
the  rum  to  the  distant  Ottawas  and  Miamis  ?  —  and  the  better 
bargains  at  Oswego  were  sure  to  tell. 

It  was  not  long  after  this  that  Hocquart,   the  intendant  of 
Canada,  in  a  memoir  which  he  prepared  on  the  state 
and  the         of  that  couutry,  acknowledged  that  this  trading  advan- 
tage of  the  English  was  beyond  question.     Oswego, 
he  said,  was  getting  the  lion's  share  of  the  furs  from  Lake  Su- 


THE    VALLEY   OF   VIRGINIA.  177 

perior,  Mackinac,  and  Green  Bay.  The  Sioux  country,  which 
was  now  become  the  principal  source  of  supply,  was  also  a 
tributary  of  the  English  post.  There  was  nothing  for  the 
French  to  do  but  to  outwit  their  rivals,  as  they  had  often  done 
in  more  artful  diplomacy  with  the  Indians.  English  folly  could 
certainly  be  counted  on  in  the  match,  when  such  iniquities  as 
"  The  Walking  Purchase  "  of  the  Pennsylvanians  were  gloried 
in.  The  French  were  already  benefiting  themselves  by  their 
diplomatic  skill.  Beauharnois  had  a  conference  in  1734  with 
the  Onondagas  from  the  heart  of  the  Iroquois  Confederacy. 
The  Wabash  Indians  were  welcoming  the  French  among  them. 
Vincennes  was  becoming  a  settled  post,  with  Louis  St.  Ange  in 
command  of  its  garrison.  This  was  something  to  compensate 
the  decadence  of  the  French  allies  farther  west,  for  the  Illinois, 
from  a  powerful  tribe  as  the  French  first  found  them,  had  been 
reduced  to  scarce  six  hundred  fighting  men. 

Thomas  Salmon,  in  his  Observations,  accounted  the  French 
wise  in  the  quiet  which  they  kept  "  before  their  designs  irondequoit 
are  ripe  for  execution."  The  French  threat  of  flank-  ^^y- 
ing  Oswego  at  Irondequoit,  though  for  a  long  time  impending, 
had  never  been  put  in  action,  and  by  1737,  the  English  asked 
the  Senecas,  living  adjacent  thereto,  for  permission  to  possess 
and  fortify  the  same  bay.  To  this  end  the  New  York  legisla- 
ture made  an  appropriation  to  buy  the  site  of  the  fort,  and 
later  it  was  thus  acquired.  The  Indians  on  the  Alleghany, 
meanwhile,  were  as  quiet  as  Salmon  thought  the  French  to  be, 
and  when  some  stragglers  were  reported  among  them,  showing- 
white  scalps,  they  hastened  to  relieve  themselves  of  the  impu- 
tation of  hostility  by  telling  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania 
that  the  mischief-makers  were  wicked  vagrants  from  the  far 
Mississippi. 

For  fifteen  or  twenty  years  the  valley  of  Virginia  had  been 
looked  into  from  the  gaps  of  the  Blue  Ridge.     Occa- 
sionally,  hunter  or  trader    had  descended  from  the  of  Virginia. 
passes  and  found  the  fords  of  the  Shenandoah.     But 
no  settlement  up  to  1730  had,  beyond  question,  been  made  along 
its  meadows,  nor  a  single   tract   of    its  umbrageous  paradise 
been  cleared.     This  year,  Governor  Gooch  issued  a  warrant  for 
forty  thousand  acres  in  the  lower  parts  of  the  vaUey  to  John 


178    RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

and  Isaac  Vanmeter.  The  next  year  (1731),  they  sold  their 
rights  to  one  Joist  Hite  of  Pennsylvania,  and  in  1732  Hite  set- 
tled near  the  site  of  the  future  Winchester  (founded  in  1752). 
If  the  claims  of  Morgan,  already  mentioned  in  the  preceding 
chapter,  be  rejected,  Hite  is  thought  to  have  been  the  first  white 
settler  in  the  valley  of  the  Shenandoah,  and  he  was  instrumen- 
tal in  leading  thither  sixteen  families  from  Pennsylvania. 

The  early  immigrants  of  the  valley  were  a  mixed  concourse 

of  hardy  people.  Among  them  was  a  part  of  that 
and  Ger-        Scotch-Irish  iuflux  which  was  animating  the  colonial 

blood  in  Jersey,  and  indeed  all  along  the  Atlantic 
coast  it  brought  in  the  martial  spirit  of  Bothwell  Bridge. 
There  were  also  many  of  those  Rhinelanders  and  Palatines  who 
had  flocked  into  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and  Carolina,  fugi- 
tives from  the  horrors  which  the  Thirty  Years'  War  had  visited 
upon  the  Germans.  They  had  fled  from  sumptuary  laws  and 
official  extortions,  —  symptoms  of  that  same  desjsotism  which, 
nearly  a  half  century  later,  sent  regiments  of  Hessians  and 
Brunswickers  to  these  same  American  wilds,  when  finally  those 
of  them  who  abided  here  became  the  stanchest  adherents  of  the 
Federal  Constitution.  These  Germans  were  in  their  own  way  a 
merry,  hearty  people,  calculated  to  make  the  life  of  a  pioneer 
as  buoyant  as  a  certain  sluggishness  would  permit.  Some  among 
them,  particularly  those  lingering  by  the  Potomac,  were  Catholic, 
tributary  to  the  only  organization  in  America  before  the  Revo- 
lution which  publicly  celebrated  mass,  —  the  isolated  Roman 
Church  in  Philadelphia,  —  and  they  were  never  quite  free  from 
the  suspicion  of  their  neighbors  lest  their  religious  sympathies 

might  too  easily  affiliate  them  with  the  French.     The 

French  Huguenots,  as  a  part  of  the  un-English  popu- 
lation, had  no  such  doubts  cast  upon  their  sincerity.  They  had 
long  ago  weakened  France,  and  had  been  denied  the  chance  of 
strengthening  Canada.  From  Boston  to  Charleston  they  were 
giving  a  rich  strain  to  the  conglomerate  races  of  the  seaboard. 
Some  of  them  were  among  the  first  settlers  of  what  is  now 
Augusta,  and  they  did  their  full  share  in  creating  a  race  of 
valiant  first-goers  in  the  wilderness. 

The  modern  local  antiquaries  of  this  region  are  not  in  full 
accord  as  to  dates  and  details  of  these  first  comers  in  the  valley 
of  Virginia ;  but  it  seems  certain  that  all  or  nearly  all  came  up 


BEVERLY  MANOR.  179 

the  valley  from  Pennsylvania,  after  crossing  the  Potomac.     It 

was  later  when  others  from  the  tidewaters  of  Virginia 

crossed  the  Blue  Ridoe.     In  the  absence  of  surveys,   m the  vaiiey 

.  of  Virginia. 

the  lands  were  occupied  m  large  part  at  a  venture,  — 
a  slight  cabin,  a  few  hills  of  corn,  or  trees  blazed  along  a  sup- 
posed boundary,  constituting  all  the  act  of  possession.  The 
settlement  at  the  modern  Woodstock  (1734)  was  in  the  same 
year  in  which  all  the  country  west  of  the  Blue  Ridge  was  set 
up  as  the  county  of  Orange,  extending  west  "to  the  utmost 
bounds  of  Virginia,"  according  to  her  sea-to-sea  charter.  Dur- 
ing the  next  few  years  (1735-1740),  the  tide  moved  up  the 
valley  to  where  the  sources  of  the  Roanoke  and  James  interlace 
with  those  of  the  Kanawha.  It  was  a  region  where  a  single 
rain-cloud  might  in  a  few  hours  feed,  on  the  one  hand,  the  foun- 
tains of  the  Atlantic  streams,  and  on  the  other  those  of  the 
Great  Valley. 

In  1735-36,  Colonel  James  Patton,  one  of  the  North  of  Ireland 
stock,  received  a  grant  of  120,000  acres  not  far  from  pattonand 
where  Staunton  now  is.  John  Sailing,  whom  we  have  ^*^^"s- 
already  mentioned  as  a  captive  of  the  Cherokees,  borne  through 
the  Cumberland  Gap,  after  six  years  of  wandering  had  returned 
to  Virginia,  and  in  1736  he  had  settled  at  the  forks  of  the 
James  west  of  the  Blue  Ridge.  In  September  of  the  same  year, 
Governor  Gooch,  in  pm-suance  of  an  Order  in  Council  jj^nor  of 
and  in  the  royal  name,  created  the  manor  of  Beverly  ^^^^^'y- 
on  the  Sherando  (Shenandoah).  Its  precise  limits  of  118,491 
acres  signify  a  supposably  careful  acquaintance  with  the  coun- 
try. Indeed,  the  local  names  of  landmarks  defining  the  bounds 
of  this  grant  indicate  that  the  region  had  become  more  or  less 
familiar.  There  were,  apparently,  squatters  here  and  there 
throughout  its  extent.  The  chief  patentee  was  William  Beverly, 
a  son  of  that  historian  of  the  name  who  had  been  a  sharer  in 
the  adventurous  merriments  of  Spotswood  a  score  of  years  be- 
fore. This  manor  lay  in  the  upper  valley,  where  Staunton  now 
stands.  Beverly  soon  bought  out  his  copartners  and  began 
settling  families.  Gooch,  in  the  same  year  (1736),  made  a 
grant  of  land  higher  up  the  valley  to  one  Benjamin  Borden. 

In  1736,  Colonel  William  Mayo  and  a  party  of  surveyors 
followed  the  Potomac  up  to  one  of  its  springs,  and  discovered 
other  waters  not  far  off  flowing  westward  into  the  Mononga- 


180    RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

hela.     The  search  for  river  sources  fell   in  with  the  habit  of 
making^  s^rants  between  rivers,  and  these  orants  were 

Colonel  ,.      .       ?  °  ,      .  „  IT  .  ,     . 

Mayo  at  the    limited,  iiD    their   valleys,  by  lines  connectino-  their 

forks  of  the  •  t  J    '       J  _  & 

Potomac.  springs.  It  was  a  custom  that  gave  rise  to  many  dis- 
putes in  these  early  apportionments  of  land,  arising 
from  a  difference  of  claim  as  to  what  constituted  a  source,  par- 
ticularly in  case  of  alternative  forks.  In  this  way  the  grant 
The  Fairfax  m^dc  to  Lord  Fairfax  of  a  territory  between  the  Raj)- 
grant.  pahanuock  and  the  Potomac,  with  bounds  at  the  west 

defined  by  the  shortest  distance  between  their  respective  foun- 
tains, helped  materially  the  settlement  of  the  Beverly  manor. 
His  lordship  claimed  that  such  a  western  line  for  his  grant 
threw  the  lower  parts  of  the  Shenandoah  valley  within  his 
domain ;  but  the  running  of  that  line  depended  on  which  was 
taken  as  the  source  of  the  Potomac,  the  fountain  of  the  north  or 
of  the  south  of  its  upper  branches.  Fairfax  and  those  who  dis- 
puted his  claim  naturally  stood  respectively  for  that  interpreta- 
tion which  increased  their  lands.  The  dispute  was  a  long  one, 
and  for  fifty  years  served  to  render  the  titles  in  the  lower  parts 
of  the  valley  uncertain,  and  this  drove  settlers  farther  south, 
where  no  such  rival  claimants  contended.  The  decision  was 
ultimately  against  the  Fairfaxes  (1786).  In  much  the  same 
way,  north  of  the  Potomac,  the  boundary  disputes  between 
Maryland,  Virginia,  and  Pennsylvania,  complicating  the  service 
of  writs,  had  a  tendency  to  prevent  settlers  lingering  on  their 
way  to  the  valley  of  Virginia. 

The  valley  had  been  for  years  the  stamping-ground  of  the 
The  valley  a  Chcrokecs  and  Catawbas  going  north,  and  of  the  Dela- 
warpath.  warcs  and  Iroquois  ranging  south  in  counter  raids, 
with  a  fearful  energy  that  the  English,  who  counted  aU  as  allies 
against  the  French,  often  endeavored  to  assuage.  Washington 
speaks  of  encountering  such  war  parties  when  he  was  surveying 
for  Lord  Fairfax  in  the  valley.  The  Iroquois,  in  some  of  these 
incursions,  thinking  to  secure  immunity  from  English  molesta- 
tion farther  south,  sometimes  tried  to  get  from  the  frontier 
officers  of  Virginia  a  certificate  of  the  confederates'  good  inten- 
tions toward  the  whites.  The  practice  did  not  serve  to  soften 
the  southern  Indians,  and  it  became  necessary  to  break  up  this 
hostile  habit.  To  hold  the  valley  free  from  such  conflicts  fell 
in  large  part  to  the  Scotch-Irish,  who  had  been  for  some  years 


182    RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

coming  in  from  Pennsylvania,  and  proving  themselves  the 
virile  race  which  later  represented  Virginia  in  the  campaign 
of  Braddock  and  at  Point  Pleasant. 

When  Governor  Gooch,  in  1738,  assured  to  this  people  liberty 
of  conscience,  a  new  incentive  was  given  to  their  im- 

Western 

extent  of  migration,  and  the  valley  began  to  be  dotted  with  ham- 
lets. This  increase  needed  new  legislation  for  local 
government,  and  all  the  territory  of  the  Virginia  charter  west  of 
the  Blue  Ridsre  was  divided  into  the  two  counties  of  Augusta 
and  Frederick,  the  latter  covering  the  northerly  extension  to 
"  the  utmost  limits  of  Virginia."  This  act,  under  the  existing 
pretensions  of  Virginia,  carried  her  jurisdiction  at  least  to  the 
Mississippi,  while  to  the  northwest  it  included  the  western  parts 
of  Pennsylvania,  and  gave  cause  for  a  long  contention  with  that 
province. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  previous  to  1740  there  had  been  an 
occasional  straggler  who  had  crossed  the  western  range 

Early  ®~  .  .  * 

EngUsh  on      of  the  Appalachians  in  some  other  pursuit  than  trade 

the  Ohio.  i  i  o  .         „ 

or  the  chase.  Durveyors  and  men  "  prospectnig  may 
have  gone  this  way  in  an  adventurous  spirit.  Mitchell,  the 
geographer  of  a  somewhat  later  day,  tells  us  that  he  had  seen 
the  journals  of  some  Virginia  surveyors  who  had  crossed  the 
gaps  and  followed  down  Wood  River  to  the  Ohio,  and  had  then 
passed  down  to  New  Orleans.  He  professes  to  have  made  from 
these  itineraries  a  draft  of  the  country  which  these  pioneers 
had  traversed  ;  but  the  supporters  of  England's  claim  to  prior- 
ity over  the  French  in  Mitchell's  time  are  often  open  to  the  sus- 
picion of  making  a  case  against  her  rivals  by  all  sorts  of  possi- 
bilities stated  as  facts.  At  all  events,  the  knowledge  which  the 
English  had  at  this  time  of  the  trans- Alleghany  region  must 
have  been  very  defective.  Thomas  Salmon,  who  was  now  sup- 
plying (1736)  the  popular  demand  in  England  for  geograph- 
ical knowledge,  seemed  to  comprehend  that  the  headwaters 
of  the  York,  Potomac,  James,  and  Rappahannock,  as  he  ex- 
pressed it,  "  locked  within  each  other,  as  are  also  the  heads  of 
several  other  rivers,  that  rise  in  the  same  mountains  and  run 
toward  the  west."  But  when  he  undertakes  to  describe  this 
distant  region  of  western-flowing  rivers,  he  manifests  a  surpris- 
ing ignorance  of  what  the  French  geographers  had  published. 


THE   CHEROKEES.  183 

"  On  the  west  side  of  the  mountains,"  he  says,  "  are  a  great 
many  lakes  of  which  the  French  are  in  possession,  as  't  is  said, 
but  these  have  not  a  communication  with  each  other  or  with 
the  river  St.  Lawrence,  as  is  commonly  reported."  Even  the 
great  English  map  of  Popple  in  1732  displays  little  knowledge 
of  any  development  beyond  that  represented  by  Delisle  some 
fifteen  years  earlier. 

Farther  south,  the  Cherokees  were  still  the  bulwark  of  Caro- 
lina.    In  1729,  word  had  reached  Engiand  that  the 

.  .  T     T  r<  TheChero- 

French  had  succeeded  in  detachins;  these  Indians  from  keesaudthe 

p  Caroliniaus. 

the  British  interests,  and  that  with  the  Creeks  they 
were  rendering  trade  beyond  the  mountains  insecure.  It  needed 
a  bold  stroke  to  break  this  savage  pact,  and  bring  the  Chero- 
kees back  to  the  English  allegiance.  The  man  for  it  was 
found.  A  Scotch  baronet,  Sir  Alexander  Cuming,  sirAiexan- 
now  a  man  of  about  forty,  who  had  been  interested  in  *^^^  Cummg. 
Berkeley's  scheme  of  an  Indian  college  at  Bermuda,  was  sent 
hither  to  prepare  the  way  for  a  revival  of  this  over-hill  trade. 
With  a  train  which  he  gathered  at  Charleston  he  started  on  his 
perilous  mission.  The  account  of  his  journey  which  we  have 
was  brought  to  light  by  the  late  Samuel  G.  Drake  in  1872, 
and  presents  a  picture  of  the  undaunted  Scotchman  moving 
through  the  hostile  countr}^  like  a  potentate,  overawing  village 
after  village  by  his  daring,  and  forcing  the  recalcitrant  sav- 
ages to  bend  the  knee  in  acknowledgment  of  the  sovereignty  of 
the  British  king.  This,  day  after  day,  is  the  story  of  his  prog- 
ress between  March  13,  1730,  when  he  set  out,  and  his  return 
to  Charleston,  April  20,  when  he  had  accomplished  a 

.  .  p     n  1  1        1  •!  TT       1  1         Treaty  with 

Circuitous  tour  oi  nve   hundred  miles.     He  brousfht  the  ciiero- 

kees.  1730. 

back  with  him  several  headmen  of  the  Cherokee  vil- 
lages, and  took  them  to  England  to  verify  by  a  treaty  at  White- 
hall, on  September  7,  1730,  an  agreement  which  he  had  made 
with  the  tribe. 

"  The  chain  of  friendship,"  says  this  London  document,  "  be- 
tween King  George  and  the  Cherokee  Indians  is  like  the  sun, 
which  shines  both  here  and  also  upon  the  great  mountains  where 
they  live,  and  equally  warms  the  hearts  of  the  English  and  the 
Indians."  This  warmth  induced  them  to  grant  to  the  whites 
the  right  to  build  habitations  and  forts    among   them.     They 


184    RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

promised  also  not  to  trade  and  not  to  have  other  intercourse 
with  any  but  the  English. 

Of  the  condition  of  the  Cherokees  at  this  time  we  have  an 
extended  statement  by  James  Adair,  a  trader  for  many 

Thecondi-  tt      •       i  •    c 

tion  of  the  years  among  them.  He  is,  however,  an  unsatisfactory 
guide  for  the  sequence  of  events,  as  he  gives  few  dates, 
and  those  confused.  When  he  began  to  trade  among  the  Cher- 
okees, about  1735,  he  reckoned  that  they  had  nearly  six  thou- 
sand warriors.  His  wanderings  took  him  as  well  among  the 
Creeks  and  Choctaws,  and  he  saw  everywhere  the  evidence  of 
their  descent  from  the  lost  tribes  of  Israel ! 

Two  years  after  Cuming's  expedition  over  the  mountains,  the 
Th  hart  r  ^^S^^^l^  government  reenforced  their  sea-to-sea  claims 
"^Georgia,  by  the  Georgia  charter  of  June  9,  1732.  This  docu- 
ment was  a  distinct  threat  to  the  French,  or  at  least 
they  considered  it  such,  since  it  was  but  the  beginning  of  a 
push  westward  around  the  southernmost  edge  of  the  AUegha- 
nies.  By  this,  it  was  seen,  the  English  might  hope  to  reach 
the  Mississippi  and  sever  Louisiana  from  Canada.  It  was  quite 
as  distinct  a  challenge  to  the  Spaniards,  when  the  trustees  of 
the  new  province  sought  to  push  against  the  Floridian  frontier 
fresh  settlements  of  whatever  persecuted  people  they  could  drag 
from  the  debtors'  jails  in  England  or  gather  in  the  mountains 
of  the  Tyrol. 

The  bounds  of  Georgia  were  the  Savannah  River  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  Altamaha  on  the  other,  and  from  their  respective 
sources  the  lines  were  to  run  due  west  to  the  Pacific  or  "  South 
Seas,"  cutting  athwart  the  French  on  the  Mississippi.  It  was 
apparent  that,  in  parting  with  something  of  her  territory  to  the 
new  proprietors,  South  Carolina  had  secured  a  bulwark  against 
the  Spaniards,  as  well  as  against  any  hostile  Indians  coming 
round  the  southern  verge  of  the  Appalachians.  Her  dangers 
were  now  to  be  expected  solely  through  the  gaps  toward  the 
modern  State  of  Tennessee  from  the  Indians  in  the  French  alli- 
ance. It  was  the  object  of  Oglethorpe,  at  the  head  of  the 
Georgian  settlements,  to  bring  these  tribes  into  friendly  rela- 
tions with  the  new  province.  The  next  year  (1733)  we  find 
him  compacting  with  the  Creeks,  Cherokees,  Chickasaws,  and 
Choctaws,  enlarging  the  English  sovereignty  and  placating  the 
savasre  nature. 


THE   CAROLINA   BARRIER.  185 

This  movement  by  Oglethorpe  was  easily  an  affront  to  the 
French,  and  for  some  years  it  was  a  varying  struggle 
between  the  English  and  these  rivals  on  the   Missis-  and  the 

.ITT  ,  -r  .    ,     Freuch. 

sippi  to  secure  the  Indian  sympathy,     it  was  a  trial 
of    English    pluck   and   French    blandishments.       Adair  says 
that  it  was  about  this  time  (1736)  that  the  French  seriously 
began  to  think  of  walling  the   English  in  by  the  Appalachians. 
Along  this  southern  stretch  of  those  mountains,  the  help  of  the 
Cherokees  was  essential  to  that  end.     The   English  saw,  as  the 
French  did,  that  this  tribe   held  with  the  Catawbas  cherokees, 
the  key  to  the  situation.     To    make   them   allies  in  au^^Jrof*' 
fullest  symi3athy,  it  was  necessary  to  force  them  into  '^"°'^" 
harmony  with  their  old  foes,  the  Iroquois.     In  1737,  Conrad 
Weiser  was  bending  his  skillful  energies  to  bring  about  the 
reconciliation  of  the  northern  confederates  and  the  Catawbas. 

It  is  to  be  feared  there  was  quite  as  much  need  of  a  similar 
spirit  of  concord  among  the  whites  of  the  Atlantic  intercolonial 
colonies,  for  intercolonial  forbearance  had  little  stead-  Jealousies. 
iness.  The  Carolina  traders  complained  that  the  Georgian 
authorities  taxed  them  for  a  passage  across  the  Savannah  on 
their  way  to  the  Cherokees,  and  in  other  respects  the  peojile  of 
one  province  or  another  found  their  neighbors  a  burden. 

We  find  the  average  English  notion  of  these  Carolina  barrier 
hills  in  what  Salmon  was  writing  at  this  time  in  his  salmon's 
efforts  to  enhance  their  glories  in  the  eyes  of  stay-at-  ^"^^^^' 
home  Britons.  He  speaks  of  "  glittering  sands  being  frequently 
washed  down,"  while  acknowledging  scant  acquaintance  with 
a  region»where  there  are  no  towns  or  settlements,  and  no  in- 
habitants, as  he  says,  but  wild  beasts.  "  Our  people  only  pass 
over  the  mountains  when  they  go  to  traffic  with  the  Indians 
near  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi."  Counting  little  on  the 
intervention  of  the  French,  he  supposes  that  there  may  come 
a  rupture  with  the  Spaniards.  If  this  shoidd  happen,  he  sees 
nothing  "  to  prevent  our  passing  the  mountains  and  possessing 
ourselves  of  the  mines  of  St.  Barbe,  if  we  make  the  Indians  of 
those  countries  our  friends,  who  are  frequently  at  war  with  tlie 
Spaniards.  ...  If  we  suffer  [he  adds]  the  French  to  build  forts 
and  fix  themselves  on  the  Mississippi  or  in  the  neighborhood 
of  the  Appalachian  Mountains,  they  will  not  only  be  in  a  con- 


186     RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

dition  to  invade  and  harass  our  plantations  from  north  to  south, 
but  will  possess  themselves  of  the  mines  there,  .  .  .  which  will 
render  that  nation  more  formidable  even  in  Europe  than  it  is 
at  present.  ...  It  is  to  be  wished,  therefore,  that  Spain  and 
England  would  in  turn  understand  their  mutual  interest,  and 
enter  into  a  defensive  alliance  in  America,  at  least  since  the 
French  can  only  be  defeated  in  their  ambitious  and  covetous 
views  by  the  united  forces  of  Great  Britain  and  Spain."  This 
was  a  welcome  complement  to  the  pet  scheme  of  France  to 
unite  with  Spain  and  drive  the  English  from  the  continent. 

Neither  scheme  looked  promising.  The  English  merchants 
England  and  fretted  uudcr  the  vigilance  of  Spain  in  thwarting  their 
Spain.  smuggling  trade  with  the   Spanish  islands.       Spain 

saw  the  same  contraband  trade  successful  enough  to  lessen  her 
commerce,  and  she  was  stirred  to  greater  vigilance.  This  in- 
creased the  British  discontent,  and  Pope  and  Johnson  made  the 
most  they  could  of  it  in  indignant  verse,  aimed  to  overthrow  an 
inert  ministry.  In  January,  1739,  Walpole  made  a  convention 
with  Spain,  and  commissioners  were  named  to  settle  the  boun- 
dary disputes  of  Georgia  and  Florida.  All  this  simply  delayed, 
but  did  not  prevent  war,  and  on  June  15,  1739,  Newcastle  no- 
tified the  colonial  governors  that  hostilities  with  Spain  were 
renewed,  and  authorized  them  to  seize  Spanish  property  and 
issue  letters  of  marque. 

It  was  not  till  September  that  Oglethorpe  heard  of  the 
actual  declaration  of  war.  He  strove  at  once  to  make 
land  and  tlic  Crccks  as  good  a  barrier  against  the  Spaniards  as 
^^'°  the  Cherokees  were  towards  the  French.     He  agreed 

with  the  Creeks  for  cessions  of  their  lands  on  the  Savannah 
as  far  as  the  Ogeechee  and  along  the  coast  to  the  St.  John's 
River,  and  so  inland  as  far  as  the  tides  went.  The  savages 
further  agreed  to  bar  out  the  Spanish. 

In  June,  1740,  the  English  had  pushed  well  into  Florida,  and 
were  before  St.  Augustine.  Here  Oglethorpe  suffered  from  the 
defection  of  some  of  his  followers,  and  was  obliged  to  withdraw. 
The  Moravians  whom  he  had  called  from  Germany,  and  who 
had  begun  to  set  up  missions  among  the  Creeks,  revolted  at  the 
war,  and  rather  than  take  part  in  it  turned  north  to  confront 
later  conflicts  in  Pennsylvania.  The  campaign  closed  with  the 
Spaniards  likely  to  hold  their  own  on  their  side  of  the  Great 
Valley. 


THE  NATCHEZ   WAR.  187 

Of  the  tribes  to  the  east  of  the  lower  Mississippi,  the  Chick- 
asaws  were  accounted  —  if  Charlevoix  reflects  the  gen-  rphe 
eral  view  —  the  "bravest  of  the  Louisiana  Indians."  Chickasaws. 
Allied  with  the  English,  they  had  provoked  in  many  ways  the 
enmity  of  the  French ;  but  their  allegiance  was  somewhat  in- 
constant, and  their  attacks  occasionally  were  directed  against  the 
English.  Whichever  way  their  hostile  frenzy  turned  them, 
those  who  felt  the  weight  of  their  resentment,  whether  English 
or  French,  charged  the  mischief  on  the  instigation  of  the 
other,  and  very  likely  with  entire  justice. 

Lying  two  hundred  miles  west  of  their  main  comitry  were 
the  Chickasaws'  friends,  the  Natchez,  bordering  on  ^he 
the  Mississippi.  Tliis  inter-tribal  friendship  had  for  N^*<=i>e^- 
a  long  time  rendered  the  situation  of  Fort  Rosalie  a  source  of 
anxiety  to  the  French.  It  ought  to  have  opened  the  eyes  of  its 
commandant  to  the  precarious  peace  of  the  little  colony  clus- 
tered about  the  fort;  but  he  was  an  imperious  and  heedless 
man,  and  his  character  hastened  the  crisis. 

The   Choctaws,  a  treacherous  people,  ostensibly  friendly  to 
the  French,  had  secretly  agreed  with  the  Natchez  and   The 
Yazoos  to  rise  upon  the  French  and  destroy  them.     It  ^an**^^ 
w^as  the  part  assigned  to  the  Choctaws  to  attack  New  ^'^29-1731. 
Orleans.     The  Natchez,   being   impatient,  anticipated  the  ap- 
pointed day,  and  so  the  plot  failed  of  its  full  effect.     They  fell, 
November  28,  1729,  on  the  defenseless  colonists  in  and  near 
Fort   Rosalie,  and   massacred   nearly  all.      A    single  fugitive 
reached    New    Orleans,    and  his  bewildered  story  created  the 
utmost  consternation. 

The  Choctaws  had  recently  made  warm  protestation  of  fidel- 
ity, and  this  had  blinded  the  people  in  that  town  to  the  danger 
which  their  insecurity  invited.  The  precipitancy  of  the  attack 
at  Fort  Rosalie  proved  their  protection,  for  by  it  they  were 
forewarned  and  escaped  like  horrors.  Excepting  a  small  com- 
motion occasioned  by  the  Yazoos  on  the  Washita,  beyond  the 
Mississippi,  the  sudden  outburst  of  the  Natchez  failed  of  sup- 
port elsewhere. 

The  French  showed  their  energy  in  moving  toward  the 
Natchez  to  avenge  the  massacre.  The  Choctaws,  still  professing 
friendship,  were  the  first  on  the  spot ;  but  were  soon  joined 
by  a   force  from  New   Orleans.     The  Natchez   yielded   their 


188     RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

ground,  and,  leaving  some  white  prisoners  behind,  fled  across 
the  Mississippi.  They  were  pursued,  but  only  their  women 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  French.  A  kind  of  guerrilla  war 
lasted  for  a  year,  and  when  Perier  brought  it  to  a  close  (Jan- 
uary 1,  1731)  he  found  himself  possessed  of  nearly  five  hun- 
dred captive  Indians,  who  were  sold  as  slaves  in  the  San 
Domingo  market.  There  is  some  question  as  to  the  place 
where  the  Natchez  made  their  last  stand,  supposed  to  be  about 
forty  miles  northwest  of  Fort  Rosalie.  Some  contend  that  it 
was  near  the  modern  Lake  Lovelace. 

The  outbreak  had  shown  the  necessity  of  improving  the 
New  Orleans  dcf cuscs  of  Ncw  Orlcaus,  and  Perier  began  to  dig  a 
fortified.  moat  arouud  the  town,  and  to  plan  forts  at  several 
points  on  the  river.  There  was  great  need  of  it,  for  the  rem- 
nant of  the  Natchez  were  active,  now  falling  upon  the  friendly 
Tonicas,  and  now  attacking  French  barges  as  they  struggled  up 
the  river,  carrying  supplies  to  the  upper  settlements.  A  part 
of  the  tribe  sought  refuge  among  the  Chickasaws,  and  there 
nurtured  their  revengeful  spirit. 

This  Natchez  war  was  the  first  serious  hostile  encounter 
which  the  Louisianians  had  had.  The  depletion  of 
ingYnyew  Ncw  Orleans,  by  sending  its  available  adults  to  man 
r  eana.  ^^^  ^^^  posts,  cxposcd  tlic  towu  to  tlic  dangers  of  a 
servile  insurrection.  Nothing  but  good  luck  and  prompt  action, 
whereby  a  dozen  of  black  ringleaders  were  hanged,  prevented 
other  scenes  of  horror  in  a  colony  where  out  of  seven  thousand 
souls  nearly  a  third  were  black  and  in  bondage. 

The  cost  of  the  war  and  the  uncertainty  attending  it  had 
discouraged  the  Company  of  the  Indies.  Other 
pany  oTthe  schcmcs  f or  profit  in  Asia  and  Africa  were  by  contrast 
up  its  chit-  far  more  promising  for  the  company's  capital.  For 
this  cause  their  interest  slackened,  and  Louisiana  got 
less  and  less  of  their  attention.  The  discontent  culminated, 
January  33,  1731,  in  a  surrender  of  the  company's  charter  to 
the  king.  Louisiana,  thus  freed  from  a  depressing  monopoly  and 
become  a  royal  province,  could  not  be  worse  off  than  she  had 
been,  and  might  be  better.  So  the  colonists  waited  develop- 
ments. 

The  king.  May  7, 1732,  organized  a  council  of  government,  and 


190     RIVALRIES    OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

recalling  Perier  for  promotion,  sent  back  Bienville  to  his  old 
Bienville  post.  Unfortunately,  little  was  done  to  improve  the 
governor  of     character  of  the  emig-ration  which  followed,  and  New 

Louisiana.  ■-'  ' 

1732.  Orleans  received  a  fresh   accession  of  the  lazy  andi 

vicious,  —  poor  material  with  which  to  recuperate  its  energies. 

All  this  was  not  promising  for  the  serious  work  which  Bien- 
ville soon  took  in  hand.  This  was  to  demand  of  the 
the'chieka-  Cliickasaws  the  surrender  of  the  Natchez  fugitives. 
The  governor  by  gifts  sought  to  gain  over  the  Choctaws 
for  a  united  campaign  against  these  harborers  of  the  enemy.  As 
the  trading-path  went,  the  Chickasaw  country  was  a  hundred 
and  sixty  miles  to  the  north  of  the  Choctaw  villages,  between 
the  upper  forks  of  the  Mobile  River.  The  march  thither  was 
a  more  laborious  one  for  the  French  than  for  their  savage 
allies  ;  but  there  was  the  prospect  of  plundering  the  English 
traders  domesticated  among  the  Chickasaws,  and  this  was  lure 
enough  for  both.  The  Chickasaws  were  known  to  belong  to 
the  savage  league  which  was  imperiling  the  passage  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  Bienville  saw  no  alternative  but  the  trial 
of  war. 

The  Choctaws  were  not  quick  to  respond  to  the  French  en- 
treaties, though  they  at  last  yielded.  It  took  time  to  lay  such 
plans  of  cooperation  that  a  supporting  army  could  be  brought 
from  the  Illinois  country  for  a  simultaneous  attack.  Mean- 
while, it  was  determined  that  Bienville  should  advance  from  the 
south  by  way  of  the  Mobile  and  Tombigbee  rivers. 

On  April  1,  1736,  Bienville's  army  left  Mobile  Fort  in  thirty 
piraguas  and  as  many  bateaux.  In  three  weeks,  they  were 
at  Tombigbee,  where  a  fort  had  already  been  built,  and  where 
the  Choctaws,  coming  across  the  country,  joined  them.  In  a 
month  more,  they  had  gone  as  far  as  their  boats  would  carry 
them ;  and  at  this  point,  seven  leagues  from  the  nearest  Chicka- 
saw village,  they  built  a  palisade  to  protect  their  boats,  and 
moved  on  by  land.  On  reaching  the  Chickasaw  village,  they 
saw  the  English  flag  flying  above  the  defenses,  and  recognized 
some  Carolina  traders  on  the  ramparts. 

The  attack  which  was  made  on  May  26  was  vigorously  re- 
pelled by  the  Chickasaws.  Firing  from  pits,  they  reserved 
their  volleys  till  the  French  were  close  upon  them.  This 
method  of  defense  may  have  given  rise  to  stories,  later  common, 


THE   CHICKASAW   WAR.  191 

that  the  Chickasaws  lived  in  holes  like  weasels,  as  we  some- 
times find  it  stated  on  legends  in  contemporary  maps. 

Fifty  of  the  assailants  are  said  to  have  fallen  at  the  first  dis- 
charge from  the  fort,  and  thirty  at  the  second.  The  Choctaws 
who  accompanied  the  French  are  variously  stated  to  have  been 
from  six  hundred  to  twice  as  many  in  number,  and,  like  all  sav- 
ages, they  lost  heart  rapidly  under  the  steady  repulse.  So  the 
French,  niunbering  perhaps  five  hundred,  were  soon  left  to 
themselves,  in  a  condition  not  much  more  sanguine  than  the 
Choctaw  fugitives.  All  the  French  plans,  indeed,  had  miscar- 
ried. The  attack  had  been  set  down  for  May  10,  when  it  was 
supposed  the  forces  from  the  Illinois  would  be  in  position  to 
assault  simidtaneously  on  the  north.  Bienville  had  been  de- 
layed by  rain,  and  had  been  obliged  to  tarry  at  intervals  to 
build  ovens  and  bake  bread.  He  was  accordingly  a  fortnight 
and  more  behind  time.  He  had  heard  rumors  which  led  him 
to  suspect  that  D'Artaguette,  commanding  this  northern  party, 
was  in  position  ;  but  he  does  not  seem  to  have  had  confirmation 
of  the  story  before  he  himself  was  obliged  to  retreat. 

The  fact  was  that  D'Artaguette,  leading  some  four  hundred 
French  and  Indians,  was  not  pleased  with  Bienville's 
orders  to  make  haste  slowly,  so  as  not  to  be  ahead  of   guette's 
the  attack  on  the  south.     When  he  came  upon  the 
northern  villages  of  the  Chickasaws,  he  unadvisedly  rushed  to  an 
attack.     The  onset  was  a   failure.     The  commander  was  cap- 
tured, and  his  Indians  fled.     The  victor  secured  a  supply  of 
powder,  and  captured    some  of  Bienville's    orders,  which  the 
English  traders  deciphered.     So  the  movements  on  the  south 
were   anticipated,  and  the  governor  more  easily  foiled  in  his 
attack. 

Bienville  returned  to  New  Orleans  with  his  bedraggled  and 
downcast  followers  as  best  he  could.     He  was  as  de-  Bienviiie 
termined,  however,  as  before  to  punish  the  foe ;  but  fo^rnew 
it  took  three  years  to  complete  his  new  preparations.   <=^™P''"sn. 
Meanwhile,  he  kept  parties  of  Choctaws  and  Illinois   skirring 
along  the  trails  of   the  English  traders  to  intercept  their  sup- 
plies.    Other  parties  were  sent  to   explore   different  paths  of 
approach  to  the  Chickasaws,  so  as  to  find  the  best.     It  was 
finally  determined  to  try  that  which  followed  the  Mississippi 
and  the  Yazoo.     Making  a  new  treaty  with  the  Choctaws,  to 


192     RIVALRIES   OF  FRANCE,  ENGLAND,  AND  SPAIN. 

get  what  help  he  could  from  their  four  thousand  warriors,  he 
established  a  base  near  the  modern  Memphis.  He  built  here 
Fort  Assumption,  and  waited  the  accumulation  of  supplies  from 
the  Illinois  country,  as  well  as  the  coming  of  troops  from 
France.     These,   to  the  number  of  seven  hundred,  arrived  in 

1739.  Delays  brought  the  usual  embarrassments.  Horses  and 
cattle  strayed  off.  Provisions  were  lavishly  consumed.  The 
Indians  deserted.  It  took  at  last  three  months  to  open  the 
roads  necessary  for  the  march  back  from  the  river. 

The  Illinois  colonists  had  responded  generously,  and  Buisson- 
A  peace  foi-  ni^re  and  Longueil  had  come  with  a  good  following 
lows.  1740.  fj-Qjjj  Fort  Chartres.  So  Bienville  found  he  was  ready 
to  start,  in  March,  1740,  with  about  twelve  hundred  whites 
and  twice  as  many  Indians.  Celoron,  come  from  Canada,  was 
sent  ahead  with  a  force  fitted  to  try  the  temper  of  the  enemy. 
The  Chickasaws  took  alarm,  and  were  induced  to  send  their 
chiefs  to  Fort  Assmnption.     A  peace  followed,  and  by  April  1, 

1740,  Bienville  was  able  to  boast  of  success,  and  returned  to 
New  Orleans. 

It  seemed  for  a  while  as  if  France  was  assured  of  a  future  in 
the  Great  Valley,  and  Enoiand  and  Spain  were  to  be 

The  pros-  ./ '  ^  o  x 

pectsof  kept  afar.  St.  Denis  had  already  confronted  and 
warned  the  Spaniards  on  the  Red  River,  and  England 
had  nowhere  got  a  footing  beyond  the  AUeghanies.  Signs  of 
material  prosperity  were  soon  apparent  in  the  French  capital 
on  the  Mississippi.  The  rice  and  tobacco  of  Louisiana  began 
to  find  a  market  in  Europe,  and  timber  was  sent  to  the  West 
Indies. 

But  provisions  came  mostly  from  the  Illinois,  and  the  peace 
with  the  Chickasaws  was  not  so  effective  but  that  courage  was 
requisite  to  defend  the  barges  passing  up  and  down  with  their 
burdens.  It  was  not  a  satisfactory  sign,  for  it  meant  that  the 
English  were  still  stirring  the  Chickasaws  to  break  their  peace 
with  the  French,  and  to  offer  a  bar  at  every  point  to  any  inter- 
course by  land  as  well  as  by  water  from  the  Gulf  to  the  Ohio. 


CHAPTEE  X. 

THE   SEARCH    FOR   THE   SEA   OF   THE  WEST. 

1727-1753. 

Pierre  Gaultier  de  Varennes,  Sieur  de  Verendrye,  was  a 
man  approachino^  fifty  years  of  asre  when  he  attracted 

.  T  TT  1  <•      1  V.5rendrye. 

notice  as  a  discoverer.  He  was  the  son  or  the  gov- 
ernor of  Three  Rivers,  and  was  born  in  that  town.  His  career 
had  been  somewhat  varied.  He  had  done  his  part  in  ravag- 
ing the  New  England  frontiers,  and  he  had  campaigned  as  a 
soldier-of-fortune  in  Flanders,  where  once  he  had  been  left  for 
dead  on  the  battlefield. 

Verendrye  had  been  placed  in  charge  of  a  fort  on  Lake  Nipi- 
gon,  north  of  Lake  Superior,  in  1727,  where  he  heard 
the  Indians  tell  their  stock  stories  of  a  westward-run-  Nipigon. 

1727. 

ning  river,  with  its  ebb  and  flow,  and  a  great  salt  lake  at 
its  mouth.  These  tales  soon  gave  him  an  ambition  to  lay  open 
the  secrets  of  the  continent  which  lay  hidden  toward  the  set- 
ting sun.  He  left  his  post  to  go  east,  in  order  to  bring  his  plans 
before  the  government  at  Quebec.  He  sought  to  represent  the 
danger  of  allowing  the  English  —  as  old  rivals  of  the  French 
for  the  Indian  trade  —  to  take  the  lead  in  the  possession  of  this 
remote  region. 

It  was  in  the  spring  of  1728,  when  going  east,  that  he  met 
Father  Guignas  at  Mackinac,  and  found  him  fully  believing  in 
a  discoverable  way  to  the  western  ocean.  He  also  feU  in  with 
Father  Degonnor.  This  priest  had  been  for  a  while  at  Lake 
Pepin,  as  the  spiritual  head  of  a  post  established  by  Beauhar- 
nois.  It  was  a  part  of  a  project  of  that  governor  to  capture 
the  trade  and  sympathies  of  the  Sioux,  in  the  hope  of  securing 
their  assistance  in  a  westward  movement  from  that 
point.  To  this  end  a  fort  had  been  lately  built  on 
that  lake.     It  was  one  of  the  most  exposed  positions  on  the 


194       THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF   THE    WEST. 

frontiers,  and  ever  since  the  French  had  known  its  neighbor- 
hood, they  had  had  strange  vicissitudes  in  all  their  efforts  to 
make  it  a  trading-post.  Floods  and  attacks  had  incessantly 
followed  its  founding.  For  the  next  ten  years,  the  post  was  to 
be  the  centre  of  intermittent  activity  against  hostile  Indians,  who 
came  in  the  main  from  the  region  of  Green  Bay.  The  dan- 
ger became  eventually  (1737)  so  great  that  Legai-deur  de  St. 
Pierre,  then  in  command,  had  found  it  prudent  to  fire  the  fort 
and  escape.  We  shall  see  that  at  a  later  day  it  was  to  devolve 
upon  St.  Pieri'e  to  be  the  successor  of  the  discoverer  whose 
career  we  have  now  entered  ujjon. 

Verendrye's  new  acquaintance,  the  priest  from  Lake  Pepin, 
was  ambitious  of  further  duty  in  even  more  exposed  positions, 
and  the  two  determined  to  ask  the  French  government  to 
found  a  post  and  maintain  a  mission  among  the  Assiniboines. 
This  northern  tribe,  denizens  of  what  is  now  Manitoba,  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  an  offshoot  of  the  Dacotah  stock.  Their 
name  as  just  given  is  in  accordance  with  the  designation  be- 
stowed by  the  French  rather  than  the  English,  and  this  diver- 
sity of  ear  has  supplied  a  great  variety  of  forms  to  their  tribal 
appellation. 

It  was  Verendrye's  belief,  and  Beauharnois  shared  it,  that 
the  chances  of  finding  a  good  route  towards  the  west  were 
better  here  than  from  Lake  Pepin.  They  counted,  not  very 
wisely,  on  finding  these  northern  Indians  more  placable  than 
the  treacherous  Sioux. 

The  rovers  of  the  remotest  frontiers  had  never  ceased  to 
be  animated  by  a  hope  of  discovering  the  great  western  sea. 
While  at  Lake  Nipigon,  Verendrye  had  often  questioned  the 
Indians,  and  Pako,  a  chief,  had  told  him  of  a  great  lake  to- 
ward the  declining  day,  which  poured  its  waters  in 
western  three  different  directions,  —  one  outlet  being  to  Hud- 
'^'^^'  son's  Bay,  another  toward    the    Mississippi,  and  the 

last  westward,  with  an  ebb  and  flow  of  the  stream  in  the 
direction  of  a  great  salt  sea,  where  there  were  villages  of  a 
dwarfish  race.  In  confirmation  of  all  which  Verendrye  pro- 
duced a  map  of  an  Indian  guide,  Otchaga,  which,  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  Danville  a  few  years  later,  was  a  premonition  of 
the  Lake  of  the  Woods,  with  a  western-flowing  outlet. 

These  stories  of  an  ocean-side  folk  far  to  the  west  were  of 


196        THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

course  nothing-  but  rehabilitations  of  many  old  fables,  such  as 
Sagard,  a  hundred  years  before,  had  repeated.  The  English 
were  being  regaled  with  them  at  this  same  time  on  Hudson's 
Bay.  La  France,  a  half-breed  Indian,  told  Arthur  Dobbs,  now 
in  that  region,  that  in  1726  he  had  gone  with  a  party  to  the 
western  sea,  where  he  had  seen  large  black  fish  sporting  in  the 
waves.  It  was  here  that  he  and  his  companions  had  attacked  a 
town,  and  none  of  the  assailers  but  himself  had  escaped  to  tell 
the  story.  Ellis,  another  frequenter  of  Hudson's  Bay,  a  few 
years  later,  reports  it  a  common  belief  among  the  tribes  that 
there  were  rivers  flowing  west  to  a  great  ocean  far  away  to  the 
sunsetting,  where  ships  sailed,  and  men  wore  beards. 

Such  were  among  the  stories  that  in  the  autumn  of  1729 
A  mid-conti-  could  bc  citcd  iu  proof  of  water-ways  to  this  distant 
nentaisea.  ^^^^  j^  jg  copious  to  uotc  liow  a  belief  in  some  cen- 
tral water  basin,  connecting  with  all  the  great  oceans  surround- 
ing North  America,  afforded  a  leading  feature  of  the  exj)eri- 
mental  geography  of  the  continent.  Two  centuries  before,  such 
a  faith  had  encouraged  Cartier  to  leave  the  salt  tide  of  the  St. 
Lawrence  in  the  hope  of  finding  a  central  fresh-water  sea. 
Modern  geographers  find  that  like  physical  conditions  are  im- 
possible in  normal  circumstances ;  but  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, they  were  relied  upon  and  exemplified  by  Bellin  and  the 
leading  cartographers,  to  solve  the  riddle  of.  a  trans-continental 
water-way. 

It  was  Verendrye's  belief  that  this  lake  of  multiple  outpours 
v^rendrye's  could  be  readied  in  twenty  days  from  Nipigon,  and  that 
views.  ^j^  expedition  starting  from  Montreal  in  May  might 

arrive  there  in  September.  Verendrye's  representations  at 
Quebec,  and,  through  the  governor,  at  Paris,  were  not  received 
with  confidence  sufficient  to  induce  the  government  to  embark 
any  capital  in  the  scheme.  The  king,  however,  was  quite  will- 
ing to  grant  a  monopoly  of  the  fur  trade  in  this  wild  region,  if 
Verendrye  could  induce  some  merchants  to  aid  him  in  an  outfit. 
The  result  was  the  formation  of  a  new  company  for  trading 
with  the  Sioux  and  other  Indians  of  this  region. 

Note.  The  opposite  map  is  from  Bowen  and  Gibson's  North  America,  published  by  Sayer  and 
Bennett,  Loudon,  ITtiS.  It  shows  tiie  Sioux  country  and  the  upper  waters  of  the  Mississippi 
River,  and  the  portage  connecting  Lake  Superior  and  the  Lake  of  the  Woods,  wliich  was  later 
forgotten.  The  dotted  line  "  settled  by  Commissaries  "  is  that  of  the  southern  bounds  of  th« 
Hudson  Bay  Company,  "after  the  treaty  of  Utrecht." 


198       THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

On  May  19,  1731,  Verendrye  signed  an  agreement  with  some 
Verendrye's  Montreal  traders,  under  which  they  furnished  his 
andde^w-  equipment.  His  party  comprised  the  leader's  three 
ture.  1731.  gQ^g^  ^  Jcsuit  missiouary.  Father  Messager,  and  some 
Canadian  boatmen  and  hunters.  On  June  8,  1731,  the  canoes 
left  Montreal  on  a  long  and  perilous  journey.  Verendrye's  pur- 
pose was  to  take  possession  of  the  new  country  for  his  royal 
master,  to  find  a  way  to  the  Pacific  if  possible,  and  to  support 
himself  meanwhile  by  hunting  and  trading  for  furs,  while  he 
afforded  a  profit  to  his  backers  if  he  could. 

By  midsummer,  he  was  on  Lake  Superior.  He  avoided  all 
On  Lake  Communication  with  the  Sieur  La  Ronde,  who  was 
Superior.  then  at  La  Pointe,  seeking  for  copper,  and  sailing  a 
forty-ton  bark,  —  the  first  on  the  lake.  Late  in  August,  Veren- 
drye crossed  the  portage  farther  north,  but  his  men  were  more 
or  less  mutinous,  and  hampered  his  movements.  Having  sent 
forward  an  exploring  party,  he  wintered  on  Pigeon  River,  and 
built  a  stockade  to  guard  his  supplies  and  to  afford  a  base 
for  future  advances.  His  first  object  was  to  discover  if  Lake 
Ouinipigon  (Winnipeg),  of  which  he  had  reports  showing  it 
to  be  an  expansion  of  the  great  western  water-way,  offered 
a  suitable  field  for  settlements.  In  May,  1732,  the  exploring 
party  came  back  from  Rainy  Lake,  and  early  in  June,  Veren- 
drye started  on,  leaving  some  portion  of  his  followers  to  hold 
his  fort  of  St.  Pierre.  By  July,  he  had  passed  beyond  Rainy 
At  the  Lake  L^kc,  and  had  built  Fort  St.  Charles  on  the  west 
woodl  ^^^^  ^^  *^^^  Lake  of  the  Woods  ;  and  here  he  wintered 

1732-33.  (1732-33).  From  this  point  he  dispatched  some 
canoes  back  to  Montreal,  with  peltries.  He  sent  at  the  same 
time  such  reports  as  he  could  give  of  his  progress,  and  in  the 
autumn  (September,  1733)  some  supplies  reached  him,  for- 
warded by  his  Montreal  supporters. 

Beauharnois  continued  to  manifest  interest  in  the  expedition, 
as  his  correspondence  with  the  home  government  shows.  The 
letters  from  Verendrye  which  reached  the  governor  from  time 
to  time,  detailing  the  party's  hardships  and  the  death  of  Veren- 
drye's nephew.  La  Jemeraye,  who  had  led  the  exploring  party, 
gave  him  little  encouragement  to  hope  that  his  solicitations  to 
the  Paris  government  to  come  to  Verendrye's  assistance  would 
be  effective ;  and  they  were  not. 


VERENDRYE'S  FORTS.  199 

In  the  spring-  of  1734,  Verendrye  sent  one  of  his  sons  to 
build  Fort  Maurepas  just  where  the  river,  flowing-  LakeWinni- 
west  from  the  Lake  of  the  Woods,  entered  the  larger  p^^' 
Lake  Winnipeg.  It  was  another  of  the  various  stockades 
which  Verendrye  within  a  few  years  scattered  about  the  coun- 
try to  secure  better  possession  and  to  increase  the  trade. 

In  August,  1734,  Verendrye  and  one  of  his  sons  returned  to 
Montreal,  to  give  his  personal  influence  to  the  business  side  of 
his  undertaking.     His  stay  was  not  long,  and  in   June,  1735, 
we  find  him  again  turning  to  the  west,  and  by  September  he 
had  reached  Fort  St.  Charles  (Lake  of  the  Woods),  to  ^^t  the  Lake 
find  its  garrison  ahnost  prostrate  from  famine.     The   woods. 
perils  of  the  undertaking  were    increasing,   and  for  ^"^• 
many  months  it  is  a  story  of  disheartenment  and  misery,  in- 
cluding the  loss  of  a  son  in  an  attack  by  the  Sioux  upon  one  of 
his  roving  parties.     The  disasters  of  1737,  both  in  the  Disasters. 
loss  of  men  and  stores,  so  discouraged  the  adventurer  ^^^^" 
that  we  find  him  in  October  advising  the  minister  that  he  must 
abandon  his  whole  project. 

The  next  year  (1738),  his  spirits  recovered,  and  he  was 
eagerly  questioning  the  Assiniboines  and  Cristineaux,  stories. 
another  tribe  of  the  neighborhood,  as  to  more  distant  ^"^^" 
parts.  He  heard  stories  of  walled  towns  farther  down  this 
supposable  westward  flowing  river,  with  white  inhabitants ; 
but  they  were  without  firearms.  These  peoples  were  said  to 
work  in  iron,  however,  and  an  Indian  said  he  had  killed  one 
of  them,  who  was  cased  in  iron. 

These  savage  informants  all  told  of  a  people  upon  the  Mis- 
souri, known  as  the  Mandans,  who  lived  on  the  path  to  the  dis- 
tant sea,  and  who  could  probably  show  the  way  thither.  The 
Mandans,  then,  must  be  found. 

In  the  summer  of  1738,  Verendrye  left  Fort  Maurepas,  and 
passing  up  the  Red  River  at  the  southern  end  of  Lake  Winni- 
peg, turned  into  the  Assiniboine.  Here  he  built  a  new  stock- 
ade, calling  it  Fort  De  La  Reine  (October,  1738),  at  Fort  De  La 
a  point  where  a  portage  led  to  Lake  Manitoba.  Some  ^®'°^'  ^^^" 
days  later  (October  18),  with  a  party  of  twenty  hired  men  and 
thirty  others,  including  some  Indians,  he  began  his  march  to- 
ward the  valley  of  the  Missouri,  reaching,  after  a  journey  of 
about  twenty-six  leagues,  his  first  obstacle  in  what  was  proba- 


200        THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

bly  Turtle  Mountain.  From  the  time  when  Joliet  and  Mar- 
quette, nearly  seventy  years  before,  remarked  upon  the  great 
volume  of  water  which  fed  the  Mississippi  from  this  turbid 
The  northwestern  affluent,  the  hope  had  not  been  aban- 

Missouri.  doned  that  the  Missouri  might  jarove  the  chief  chan- 
nel to  the  western  sea.  It  came  to  be  believed  that  it  could 
be  followed  toward  the  west  a  distance  corresponding  to  the 
practicable  ascent  of  the  Ohio  toward  the  east.  Mitchell,  on 
his  map,  records  this  as  a  current  opinion.  The  French  had 
from  time  to  time  explored  it,  led  by  reports  of  silver  mines, 
and  by  stories  of  the  access  thereto  which  the  Spaniards  got  by 
some  of  its  southern  branches.  While  Verendrye  was  travers- 
ing its  upper  reaches,  other  French  were  now  exploring  from  its 
main  stream  toward  New  Mexico.     Two  Frenchmen, 

French  ex- 

pioration  Mallet  by  name,  and  one,  at  least,  a  priest,  in  1739  fol- 
spaniards.      lowcd  up  the  Plattc,  and  by  its  southern  fork  reached 

1739. 

the  plains  of  Colorado.  Passing  the  upper  Arkansas, 
they  were  at  Santa  Fe  in  July,  and  tarried  through  the  winter. 
In  the  spring  (May,  1740),  their  party  divided,  and  while  some 
went  across  the  plains  to  the  Panis  (Pawnees),  others  coursed 
down  the  Arkansas  to  the  Mississippi.  Their  reports  induced 
Bienville  to  suspect  that  the  regions  they  had  traversed  were 
parts  of  China,  — a  curious  survival  of  the  old  Asiatic  theory  of 
the  continent,  —  and  accordingly  he  sent  an  exploring  party  up 
the  Canadian  fork  of  the  Arkansas.     It  accomplished  nothing. 

Meanwhile,  Verendrye  was  having  startling  experiences  among 
The  Man-  ^  people  wliosc  unwoutcd  customs  observed  by  later 
dans.  1738.  explorcrs  gavc  rise  to  a  theoiy,  welcomed  by  the 
Welsh,  that  in  the  Mandans  were  to  be  found  some  of  the  de- 
scendants of  the  hapless  companions  of  Prince  Madoc.  Veren- 
drye first  encountered  this  people  on  November  28,  1738,  and 
on  December  3  he  entered  their  village.  His  narrative  shows 
that  he  was  struck  among  his  hosts  with  a  physiognomy  which 
was  not  Indian,  and  with  a  mixture  of  light  and  dark  in  their 
complexions,  the  women  particularly  having  in  many  cases 
almost  flaxen  hair.  He  observed,  too,  that  their  method  of 
fortifying  their  village  was  not  one  which  he  had  seen  among 
other  tribes. 

These  Mandans  told  the  new-comers  that  a  day's  journey  off 
there  were  white  men  who  were  habitual  horsemen,  and  who 


THE  MANDAN   VILLAGE.  201 

were  incased  in  metal  when  they  fought,  —  and   he  naturally 
thought  of  Spaniards  from  New  Mexico. 

Verendrye's  sojourn  among  this  interesting  people  was  but 
short,  but  he  lost  no  time  in  taking  formal  possession  of  their 
country  in  the  king's  name.  He  left  two  men  among  them  to 
learn  their  language,  and  to  discover,  if  possible,  who  these  work- 
ers in  metal  were.  After  having  suffered,  as  he  says,  more 
fatigue  and  wretchedness  throughout  his  journey  than  he  had 
ever  before  experienced,  he  reached  La  Reine  on  his  return  in 
February,  1739.  The  men  whom  he  had  left  behind  joined 
him  at  La  Reine  in  September,  and  had  a  new  story  to  tell  him. 
While  they  were  in  the  Mandan  village,  some  of  a  tribe  farther 
west  had  come  to  trade  there.  These  strangers  reported  that 
white  and  bearded  men  lived  near  their  home.  They  called 
them  pale  faces,  and  said  that  the}^  built  forts  of  brick  and 
stone  and  mounted  cannon  on  them.  They  prayed  with  books, 
worshiped  the  cross,  cultivated  gardens,  and  garnered  grain, 
used  oxen  and  horses,  wore  clothes  of  cotton,  and  strapped  soles 
to  their  feet.  Their  habitations  stood  by  a  large  sea,  which 
rose  and  fell,  and  whose  waters  could  not  be  drunk.  It  was 
wondered  if  they  were  Spaniards  upon  the  Gulf  of  California. 

The  documents  printed  by  Margry  give  but  scant  knowledge 
of  the  experiences  of  these  two  years ;  but  Brymner  has  well 
supplied  the  want  in  the  journal,  kept  by  Verendrye,  which  is 
printed  in  the  Report  of  the  Dominion  Archives  for  1889. 
The  fatigues  of  the  expedition  had  told  upon  the  leader,  and  he 
spent  a  part  of  the  winter  and  spring  of  1739  at  La  Reine, 
exhausted  in  body  and  troubled  in  mind.  In  April,  ^ake  Mani- 
he  sent  his  son  to  explore  the  portage  toward  Lake  lasLltche.^* 
Manitoba,  and  upon  that  water  the  yoimger  Veren-  ^'''°'  ^"^^' 
drye  constructed  Fort  Dauphin,  and  then  pushed  on  to  explore 
the  Saskatchewan  region. 

This  period  of  activity  was  followed  by  one  of  doubt  and  ex- 
haustion. In  October,  1739,  some  supplies  reached  La  Reine, 
but  Verendrye  found  it  necessary  to  go  back  to  Montreal  to 
secure  what  merchandise  was  needed  for  traffic.  Reaching 
the  settlements,  he  found  his  affairs  in  a  rueful  condition :  he 
was  40,000  livres  in  debt,  and  a  defendant  in  the  courts.  His 
commercial  backers  were  exacting,  and  his  business  rivals  in 
the  peltry  trade  harassed  him.  Beauharnois  was  almost  alone 
active  in  his  behalf. 


202        THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

Afterwards,  in  1741,  Verendrye  joined  his  companions  at  the 
V6rendrye'8  wcst.  In  the  spHng  of  1742,  he  sent  his  two  surviving 
weTtward.  ^^us  to  renew  the  western  search.  They  left  La  Reine 
^^■^^^  on  April  20,  and  proceeding  up  the  Assiniboine  and 

Souris  rivers,  passed  on  (Jvily  23)  in  a  west-southwest  course 
over  a  rolling  prairie  to  the  Mandan  towns,  seeing  no  one  for 
twenty  days.  On  August  11,  they  reached  some  hills.  It  is  now 
supposed  that  these  elevations  were  the  Powder  River  range  sep- 
arating the  forks  of  the  Little  Missouri,  a  southern  affluent  of 
the  greater  river.  To  inquiries  after  the  sea,  the  wanderers  got 
the  same  answer,  which  led  them  on  from  one  tribe  to  another, 
each  referring  them  to  the  one  beyond.  None  had  seen  this 
great  water  ;  but  later  they  found  a  tribe  who  had  captured 
some  Snake  Indians,  and  these  prisoners  reported  it  lying  still 
farther  west.  A  war  party,  preparing  for  an  attack  on  these 
same  Snakes,  opened  the  way  for  a  further  advance,  and  the 
brothers  went  on. 

It  was  the  1st  of  January,  1743,  when  these  two  sons  of 
They  see  Vcrendryc  saw  what  was  perhaps  the  Big  Horn  Range, 
janua^'"!'  ^^  outlyiug  buttrcss  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  run- 
1743.  ning  athwart  the  sources  of  the  Yellowstone,  and  lying 

a  hundred  miles  or  more  east  of  the  Yellowstone  Park.  Their 
narrative  does  not  indicate  that  the  sight  was  in  any  way  a 
striking  one,  and  there  has  been  doubt  expressed  as  to  the  iden- 
tification of  the  actual  summits  which  were  seen.  One  of  the 
brothers  went  with  the  advancing  war  party  to  the  foot  of  these 
mountains,  which  were  "  well  wooded  and  very  high,"  as  he 
describes  them  (Januaiy  8).  He  little  dreamed  that  beyond 
them,  and  beyond  the  Snakes,  lay  eight  hundred  miles  or  more 
of  mountain  and  declivity,  stretching  to  the  coveted  sea. 

The  conclusion  reached  by  Professor  Whitney  in  his  study  of 
the  problem  is  that  the  explorers  "  may  have  been  within  one  or 
two  hundred  miles  of  Snake  River,  Here  they  heard  accounts 
of  the  missions  of  the  Spaniard  in  California,  which  contained 
enough  of  truthful  items  to  prove  beyond  doubt  that  there  had 
been  communication  across  the  country  between  the  Pacific 
coast  and  the  upper  Missouri  region."  Parkman's  study  of 
their  route  gives  much  the  same  conclusions  as  reached  by  the 
present  writer,  but  he  thinks  it  not  unlikely  that  the  explorers 
may  also  have  pushed  somewhat  beyond  this  mountain  barrier 


VERENDRYE'S  LAST   YEARS.  203 

of  the  Big  Horn.  Their  narrative  tells  lis  that  they  reached,  at 
all  events,  the  Snake  village  which  they  searched  for,  but  found 
it  abandoned.  Thus  balked  in  their  purpose,  the  party,  with 
their  white  companions,  turned  back,  and  left  the  great  barrier 
of  the  Rockies  unsealed. 

In  the  spring  of  1743,  the  young  Verendryes  were  back  on  the 
banks  of  the  Missouri,  and  here,  amid  a  tribe  —  very  spring. 
likely  one  of  the  bands  of  the  Sioux  —  they  buried  a  ^^^^- 
leaden  plate,  engraved  with  the  royal  arms.  Turning  up  the 
Missouri,  by  the  middle  of  May  they  were  again  among  the 
Mandans.  Here  they  found  a  party  of  Assiniboines  traveling 
east,  and  falling  in  with  their  train  on  July  2,  1743,  they  later 
reached  La  Heine,  having  been  absent  about  fifteen  months. 

This  period  of  venturesome  exploration  stands  out  amid  the 
dreary  monotony  of  Verendrye's  misfortunes.     Five 
or  six  years  of  life  remained  to  him,  but  they  were  bar-  later  years. 

1743-1749. 

ren  in  results  and  harassing  in  incidents.  He  tried  to 
get  the  minister  to  listen  to  tales  of  what  he  had  done.  He 
recounted  to  him  the  story  of  the  posts  he  had  established,  and 
outlined  the  promise  of  further  discoveries,  but  it  was  the  ap- 
peal of  a  wearied  and  poverty-stricken  adventurer,  and  made 
little  impression.  At  one  time  he  was  relieved  of  command, 
and  then  later  sent  back  to  try  once  more ;  but  nothing  came 
of  it.  His  sons  went  to  Quebec,  seeking  to  gain  the  attention 
of  the  government,  or  to  incite  the  cupidity  of  the  merchants, 
but  in  vain. 

Kalm,  the  Swedish  traveler,  met  V^rendrye  in  his  last  year, 
and  records  something  of  what  he  learned  from  him.  The  re- 
tired leader  told  him  that  he  had  in  some  places  observed  fur- 
rows in  the  soil  which  indicated  that  a  people  advanced  enough 
to  use  ploughs  had  once  been  in  occupation.  He  had  found,  he 
said,  monumental  stones,  generally  without  inscriptions,  but  in 
one  case  there  were  "  Tartar  characters,"  but  no  one  could  tell 
their  origin.  Kalm  makes  no  mention  of  any  mountains,  as 
figuring  in  Verendrye's  story.  This  is  the  more  singular,  be- 
cause V^rendrye  knew  the  Indian  map  by  Otchago,  which  often 
figures  in  contemporary,  accounts,  and  which  designates  what 
we  now  know  as  the  Rocky  Mountains,  as  the  "  Mountains  of 
Bright  Stones." 


204        THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

The  elder  Verendrye  died  at  Three   Rivers  on  December  6, 

1749,  and  on  February  27    following,  La  Jonquiere, 

dies^  Sue-     wlio  was  now  governor  of  Canada,  wrote  to  the  minis- 

ifegardeM      tcr  at  Paris  that   Legardeur  de  St.  Pierre  had  been 

selected  to  follow  up  the  discoveries  of  the  dead  hero. 

It  was  evident  that  La  Jonquiere  was  determined  to  institute 
La  Jon-  ^  ^^6W  control  of  this  western  search,  for  the  younger 
toiwestern  Vereudryc  had  in  vain  sought  to  be  ajspointed  to 
search.  carry  on  the  work  which  his  father  had  enjoined  upon 

him.  By  the  influence  of  Galissonniere,  the  cross  of  St.  Louis 
had  been  indeed  bestowed  on  the  elder  discoverer,  but  this 
availed  little.  The  new  governor  had  his  own  plans,  and  it  has 
been  suspected  that  they  involved  commercial  interests  to  be 
shared  in  common  with  Bigot,  the  new  intendant,  and  St.  Pierre 
himself.  The  governor  was  by  no  means  sure  that  Verendrye's 
search  had  been  in  the  best  direction.  He  accordingly  instructed 
the  Sieur  Marin,  commanding  at  Green  Bay,  to  go  to  the  source 
of  the  Mississippi,  and  discover  if  there  was  not  over  the  divide 
"  rivers  flowing  into  the  western  sea."  La  Jonquiere  reported 
these  orders  to  the  minister  in  October,  1750. 

The  region  of  many  lakes,  margined  by  the  birch,  maple,  and 
pine,  with  wild  rice  plentiful  in  the  glades,  which  is 

The  source  ,  ,  ,  i    •    t     i  i 

of  the  Mis-  now  kuowu  to  gather  the  multiplied  waters  that  unite 
to  form  the  Great  River,  had  once  been  the  home  of 
the  Dacotahs,  but  now  for  twenty  years  these  savages  had  been 
scattered  before  the  Chippeways.  It  was  many  years  yet  before 
the  hydrographical  relations  of  the  region  were  to  be  all  under- 
various  stood.  Vaugoudy  was  at  this  very  time  (1750)  mak- 
conjectures.  -j^^  tlicse  fouutains  of  the  Mississippi  the  same  with 
those  that  supplied  the  smaller  affluent  of  Lake  Winnipeg. 
Bellin,  another  leading  French  cartographer,  from  the  period  he 
made  the  maps  for  Charlevoix's  journal,  had  advocated  various 
notions,  wild  to  us,  of  the  hydrography  of  this  interior  region. 
He  had  contended  that  the  "  Mer  de  I'Ouest "  lay  not  more  than 
three  hundred  leagues  west  of  Lake  Superior,  and  thought  it 
highly  probable  that  there  were  connecting  waters,  rendering 
easy  a  passage  from  one  to  the  other.  With  this  propensity  to 
find  interlinking  natural  canals,  Bellin  now  curiously  compli- 
cates the  question  of  the  source  of  the  Mississippi.  In  his 
map  of    1755,  he    connects  Lake  Winnipeg  by  a   continuous 


LAKE    WINNIPEG. 


205 


channel  with  the  Mississippi,  through  an  intervening  link  which 
he  calls  the  "  Riviere  Rouge,"  saying  that  "  the  course  of  it  is 
little  known."  He  places  the  springs  of  the  Mississippi  not  in 
"Winnipeg  or  beyond,  but  on  a  lateral  affluent  of  this  same 
mysterious  river.  This  "  Riviere  Rouge  "  is  made  one  with  the 
"Assiniboils  "  just  before  it  reaches  "  Lac  Ouinipigon,"  and  the 


[From  Vaugondy's  Amerique  Septentrionale,  1750,  showing  the  Mississippi  rising  in  the  "L. 
Assinipoils."] 

"  Riviere  des  Assiniboils  "  is  supposed  to  be  the  stream  "  by 
which  one  is  believed  to  go  to  the  sea  of  the  west."  Any  one, 
therefore,  could  at  that  day  appeal  to  Le  Neptune  Fraiigois, 
in  which  Bellin's  map  appeared,  as  authority  for  a  supposed 
passage  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  through  the  Mississippi  and 
connecting  streams,  to  Lake  Winnipeg,  from  which  there  were 


206        THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

water-ways  to  the  Pacific  and  to  Hudson's  Bay,  —  a  fair  ex- 
position of  the  geographical  delusion  clinging  about  an  imag- 
ined interior  basin,  with  its  multiplied  outlets. 

Mitchell,  the  leading  British  geographer  of  the  day,  is  less 
imaginative  in  saying  that  the  Mississippi  had  been  ascended  to 
about  45°  north  latitude,  and  that  its  source  was  supposed  to 
be  in  50°  of  latitude,  while  in  its  longitude  it  lay  about  mid- 
way across  the  continent.  Jefferys,  the  rival  of  Mitchell,  places 
the  source  more  nearly  in  45°,  while  Danville,  in  France,  puts 
it  at  46°. 

There  is  no  record  of  what  Marin  discovered,  but  it  was 
given  out  that  his  purpose  was  ultimately  to  unite  with  St. 
Pierre  at  some  point  on  the  Pacific. 

The  movement  under  St.  Pierre  began  in  June,  1750.  We 
St  Pierre.  ^^^  enabled  to  follow  him  by  a  journal  which  he  drew 
1750.  ^p^  g^j^^l  which  is  printed  both  by  Margry  and  Brym- 

ner.  The  expedition  was  absent  three  years,  but  accomplished 
little,  though  its  leader  had  had  many  years'  experience  in  wood- 
ranging,  and  came  of  a  forest-loving  race,  for  he  was  a  great- 
grandson  of  that  Jean  Nicollet  who  had  got  the  first  intimations 
of  the  Mississippi.  St.  Pierre  lost  time  at  the  start  by  trying 
without  avail  to  compose  a  peace  between  the  Rainy  Lake  In- 
dians and  the  Sioux.  He  was  later  impeded  by  the  hardships 
of  his  travel  and  by  the  treachery  of  the  Assiniboines.  He  pro- 
ceeded himself  no  farther  than  Fort  La  Reine  on  the  Assiniboine. 
He  had  determined,  on  any  northern  march,  to  avoid  Hudson's 
Bay  by  turning  to  the  west,  and  thereby  to  find,  as  he  thought, 
the  sources  of  the  Missouri,  so  that  its  current  might  be  made 
use  of  in  transporting  his  supplies.  It  was  Verendrye's  mistake, 
he  contended,  in  not  clinging  to  that  river  "by  which  some 
settled  peoples  could  be  reached,  and  no  other  than  the  Span- 
iards." 

It  was  in  this  direction  that  St.  Pierre  did  all  that  was  re- 
TheSas-  markablc  in  his  three  years'  absence.  He  sent  his 
expioreT"  lieutenant,  the  Chevalier  de  Niverville,  to  command  a 
'^''^^-  party  starting  (May  29,  1751)  for  the  Saskatchewan. 

Some  portion  of  it  ascended  that  river  —  called  by  them  Pas- 
koya  — "  aux  montagnes  des  Roches,  —  the  earliest  use,  in 
Kingsford's  opinion,  of  the  appellation  Rocky  to  any  part  of 
the  great  range.     They  built  Fort  La  Jonquiere,  three  hundi-ed 


ST.  PIERRE  AT  LA   REINE. 


207 


miles  above  the  river's  mouth,  but  only  to  abandon  it  and  fall 
back  to  La  Reine.  St.  Pierre,  finding-  further  progress  in  this 
direction  deranged  by  continued  inter-tribal  hostilities  among 


—   aue.  d'un.  itimpie,  trait,  ft  la^JJIer 
ejft  ia3jee-  erL  cotuetw  a  eatt- . 


EssAl   drntei    CylRTE    que^  N^-    GinUamne     Detsle  Pf  Ge^arraphc     a 
et  de'  Udcctdetmey  des  Scie^nce^r  avaitiainb  a  scnv  Me:moirey  pre*rente-  cv  lev  Cent 

J^LeA    JTE      I^OtTEST. 


Ammpoiis 


C  AK  A 


[Taken  from  the  Memoire  presented  to  the  Academy  of  Sciences  at  Paris  by  Buache,  August 
9,  1752.] 

the  savages,  —  the  most  perfidious,  as  he  claimed,  which  he  had 
ever  encountered,  —  lingered  on  at  La  Reine,  seeking  in  one  way 
and  another  to  prevent  his  expedition  being  an  absolute  failure. 
In  his  talks  with  the  Indians,  one  old  man  told  him  of  people, 
"  not  quite  so  white  as  the  French,"  living  in  the  west,  "  where 


208        THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

the  sun  sets  in  the  month  of  June,"  which  he  considered  to  be 
in  a  west-northwest  direction.  "  It  is  certain,"  he  says,  "  that 
there  are  civilized  people,  not  unknown  to  the  English,  in  this 
distant  region,  and  I  have  myself  seen  the  horses  and  saddles 
obtained  there  by  the  Indians."  He  found  it  impossible  to 
induce    the    natives  to  furnish   an  escort  thither,  because,  as 


DELISLE,  1722. 

[From  his  Carte  d^Amerique  (Paris),  showing  a  river  running  west,  near  the  source  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi.] 

he  says,  they  feared  the  revenge  of  the  English  at  Hudson's 
Bay.  "  It  is  evident,  then,"  he  adds,  "  that  so  long 
at  Hudson's  as  tlicsc  Indians  trade  with  the  English,  there  is  no 
hope  of  succeeding  in  finding  a  western  sea.  If  there 
were  no  English  settlements  at  Hudson's  Bay,  all  would  be 
easy." 

He  finally  dispatched  a  body  of  Indians,  without  any  French 
in  company,  to  this  western  settlement,  and  gave  them  a  let- 
ter to  its  commandant ;  but  he  never  heard  more  of  the 
party,  —  a  disappearance  which  he  again  laid  to  dread  of  the 
English. 


[Philippe  Buache's  idea  of  the  Sea  of  the  West,  with  approaches  from  the  Mississippi  and  the 
Great  Lakes,  in  a  map  presented  to  the  Acad,  des  Sciences,  August,  1752,  and  given  in  Expose 
des  decouvertes  au  nord  de  la  grand  mer,  par  PhUippe  Buache,  September  2,  1755. 


210        THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

There  was  a  fresh  revival  of  the  English  interest  just  now, 
in  the  navigation  of  Hudson's  Bay.  Parliament  had,  in  1745, 
offered  a  reward  of  <£20,000  to  induce  a  discovery  of  the  north- 
west passage,  and  it  had  been  found  that  it  was  j)racticable  for 
ships  of  the  company  to  go  in  and  out  of  the  bay  in  a  single 
season  without  wintering.  This  all  meant  for  the  French  an 
eager  rivalry  in  the  fur  trade  to  the  northwest  of  Lake  Supe- 
rior. 

St.  Pierre  remained  at  La  Reine  till  February,  1752.  He 
AtLaReine.  ^^^^  ^^  times  good  grounds  for  fearing  the  worst,  for 
^'^^'^-  the  Indians  were  not  infrequently  insolent  and  blood- 

thirsty. Abandoning  the  post,  he  returned  to  the  settlements, 
At  Quebec.  ^^^  ^^  October,  1753,  was  at  Quebec.  The  best  he 
1753.  could  report  to  Duquesne,  now  in  command,  was  the 

story  of  a  remote  and  miknown  settlement,  such  as  the  old 
Indian  had  told  it.  Rumors  which  Niverville  had  gathered  near 
the  mountains  seemed  to  confirm  it,  though  the  lieutenant  added 
that  the  Indians  from  whom  he  had  learned  the  tale  distinctly 
averred  that  these  unknown  traders  were  not  English,  and  did 
not  have  firearms,  —  the  latter  want  being  a  usual  concomitant 
of  the  story. 

Just  as  the  long  movement  undertaken  by  Verendrye  and  St. 
Monracht-  Pierre  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  had  proved  abortive, 
^P^-  and  had  served  little  purpose  beyond  familiarizing  the 

public  with  repeated  if  not  idle  stories  of  a  western  sea  and  its 
civilized  coast  people,  came  the  publication  in  Paris  of  the  story 
of  Moncacht-Ape.  This  new  revelation  of  a  supposable  but 
imaginary  configuration  of  the  Pacific  coast  line  unsettled  for  a 
while  the  soberer  sense  of  geographers. 

The  story  of  Moncacht-Ape  —  "  one  who  destroys  obstacles 
and  overcomes  fatigues,"  as  the  name  is  said  to  signify  —  is  that 
of  a  Yazoo  Indian,  who,  about  the  year  1700,  traversed  the 
continent,  and  came  back  to  tell  the  story.  His  recital,  as  we 
have  it,  was  made  about  the  year  1725,  when  he  was  old  and 
garrulous ;  and  Le  Page  du  Pratz,  then  a  French  settler  near 
the  Natchez,  listened  to  it.     It  ran  thus  :  — 

Impelled  to  travel  in  search  of  information  about  the  origin 
of  his  race,  and  easily  severing  home  ties  because  he  had  lost 
wife  and  children,  Moncacht-Ape  went  among  the  Chickasaws, 


MONCACHT-APE.  211 

*  * 

making  his  inquiries.  Getting-  no  satisfaction  here,  and  possessed 
of  a  vague  notion  that  the  east  must  be  the  cradle  of  his  people, 
he  started  toward  the  sunrise.  In  the  story  of  his  experiences 
in  this  direction  we  recognize  some  knowledge,  by  hearsay  at 
least,  of  the  Falls  of  Niagara,  and  some  apprehension  of  the 
extraordinary  tides  of  the  Bay  of  Fundy.  Not  finding  his 
question  answered  at  the  east,  Moncacht-Ape  determined  to 
try  the  west. 

The  narrative  now  carries  him  north  to  the  Ohio  River,  which 
he  crossed.  Tracking  a  prairie  land,  he  passed  the  Mississippi 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri,  and  gives  a  recognizable  de- 
scription of  the  commingling  of  the  waters  of  the  two  great 
rivers.  He  followed  up  the  Missouri  to  a  tribe  of  that  name, 
where  he  wintered  and  learned  their  language.  He  speaks  of 
finding  large  herds  of  buffalo.  In  the  spring,  he  started  up  the 
river  again,  and  among  the  Canzes  (Kansas)  he  first  learned 
of  a  divide,  beyond  which  a  inver  would  be  found  flowing  west. 
The  Missouri  Indians  had  told  him  to  follow  up  their  river  for 
a  single  moon,  and  then  to  diverge  to  the  north,  where,  after 
several  days'  journeying,  he  would  reach  a  western-flowing  river. 
It  happened  that  he  was  not  forced  to  find  his  way  alone.  He 
chanced  upon  a  camp  of  Otters,  as  the  tribe  was  called,  who 
took  him  up  to  a  place  whence  a  nine  days'  march  carried  the 
party  to  a  turning-point.  Here  bending  their  course  north, 
after  five  days  they  reached  the  river  that  flowed  west,  upon 
which,  farther  down,  these  Otters  lived.  In  descending  this  river, 
oiu-  wanderer  had  the  company  of  some  Otters  for  eighteen 
days.  After  this  he  proceeded  alone  in  a  dug-out  to  a  village, 
where  he  tarried  for  the  winter  to  learn  the  language  spoken 
by  a  people  farther  on,  which  these  new  friends  could  teach 
him.  In  the  following  spring,  he  went  on  to  a  tribe  who  wore 
long  hair.  A  blind  old  chief  among  them.  Big  Roebuck,  was 
kind  to  him  and  promised  him  an  equally  good  reception  from 
the  tribes  beyond,  if  he  woidd  only  say  that  Big  Roebuck  was 
his  friend. 

If  one  confidently  seeks  to  identify  his  landmarks,  he  was  now 
well  down  the  Columbia  River.  When  about  a  day's  journey 
from  the  sea,  he  began  to  hear  stories  of  a  strange  people  who 
annually  came  to  the  coast  in  ships.  They  were  represented 
as  white,  bearded,  and  clothed.      Their  sole  purpose  of  coming 


212        THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

if 

was  to  secure  yellow  dye-wood,  which  had  a  disagreeable  odor. 
Though  they  had  guns  which  made  a  great  noise,  they  withdrew 
if  confronted  by  Indians  more  numerous  than  they  were.  The 
natives  had  sometimes  struggled  with  these  visitors,  and  the 
strangers  had  occasionally  carried  off  some  of  the  Indian  wo- 
men, but  had  never  captured  any  men,  —  so  one  form  of  the 
narrative  says.  The  Indians  had  never  succeeded  in  taking  any 
of  these  strange  comers  either  dead  or  alive. 

The  identification  of  localities  fails  here,  for  there  are  no 
such  dye-woods  on  the  Oregon  coast,  nor  is  any  tree  of  a  single 
kind  so  universally  prevalent  in  that  region  that,  if  entirely 
destroyed,  the  country  would  be  treeless,  —  as  is  one  of  the 
statements  of  the  story. 

Moncacht-Ape  arrived  on  the  coast  at  a  time  when  the 
neighboring  Indians  were  gathering  for  a  concerted  attack  ou 
these  strangers,  who  were  soon  expected  to  make  their  annual 
appearance.  When  the  ship  appeared,  its  people  occupied  three 
days  in  filling  water-casks  "  similar  to  those  in  which  the  French 
put  fire-water."  After  this  they  scattered  to  fell  the  dye-wood 
trees.  The  savages  now  attacked  them,  and  killed  eleven  before 
they  reembarked.  This  gave  the  narrator  an  opportunity  to 
examine  the  slain.  On  two  only  did  he  find  guns  with  powder 
and  ball.  Their  bodies  were  thick  and  short ;  their  skin  white  ; 
their  heads  heavy,  and  wound  with  cloth ;  their  hair  cropped 
except  on  the  middle  of  the  crown ;  their  garments  of  a  soft 
stuff,  and  their  leggings  and  shoes  one  piece,  and  too  small  for 
Moncacht-Ape  to  wear.  It  was  the  evident  intention  of  the 
story-teller  to  convey  the  impression  that  the  visitors  were  an 
Oriental  people. 

After  this  conflict,  the  rover  went  north  along  the  coast  till 
he  found  the  days  were  growing  longer.  When  he  had  learned 
that  still  farther  on  the  land  was  "  cut  through  from  north  to 
south,"  he  only  expressed  what  European  geographers  had  fig- 
ured ever  since  Bering,  in  1741,  had  finally  proved  the  proxim- 
ity of  the  American  and  Asiatic  shores. 

Of  Moncacht-Ape's  return  to  the  Mississippi  valley  we  have 
no  particulars,  but  he  is  reported  as  saying  that  though  he  had 
been  absent  five  years,  he  could  go  over  the  same  route  again 
in  thirty-two  moons. 

We  have  the   story  in  two  forms,  —  first  as  published  by 


MONCACHT-APE.  213 

Dumont  in  his  3/emolrcs  de  la  Loidsiane  (Paris,  1753),  in 
whicli  he  professes  to  have  known  the  Indian,  whose  ordinary 
name  among  his  people  was  "  The  Interpreter,"  in  recognition  of 
his  mastery  of  tongues.  Dumont  acknowledges  that  he  got  the 
story  from  Le  Page  du  Pratz,  who  published  it  later,  also  at 
Paris,  in  1758,  in  his  Histoire  de  la  Louisiane.  Le  j^  p^g^  ^^ 
Page,  then,  is  the  source  of  the  story.  He  had  come  ^^^^^' 
to  Louisiana  in  1718,  and  remained  there,  chiefly  near  the 
Natchez,  till  1734.  He  had  been  a  wanderer,  was  of  an  inquisi- 
tive turn  of  mind,  and  a  theorist  by  impulse.  He  was,  more- 
over, interested  in  discussing  the  origin  of  the  American  Indians. 
This  led  him  to  much  converse  with  those  among  the  savages 
who  were  intelligent,  and  he  seemed  to  think  that  the  Yazoos 
were  jsarticularly  noteworthy  in  those  habits  in  which  they 
showed  a  difference  from  their  neighbors.  This  readily  accounts 
for  the  special  intercourse  with  one  of  that  tribe,  who  had,  or 
was  represented  as  having,  similar  tastes.  Such  was  the  repu- 
tation of  Moncacht-Ape. 

At  the  time  when  Dumont  got  the  story  from  Le  Page,  if 
we  can  rely  upon  the  way  in  which  Dumont  tells  it,  Le  Page 
made  it  in  the  ending  quite  different  from  the  shape  in  which 
he  later  published  it  himself.  Le  Page  must  have  been  in 
France  when  Dumont  printed  his  version  as  professedly  de- 
rived from  Le  Page,  and  yet  we  have  no  protest  from  the 
original  narrator  that  his  recital  had  been  changed. 

The  difference  in  the  two  texts  is  that  Dumont  omits  some 
part  of  the  details  of   the  bearded  men,  and  makes 

DiffcrGUCBS 

Moncacht-Ape  learn  of  the  other  details  only  by  hear-  m  the  texts 
say,  since  a  hostile  tribe  had  prevented  his  actually 
getting  to  the  coast. 

So  far  as  the  story  had  influence  in  later  years,  the  ending 
as  given  by  Le  Page  seems  to  have  prevailed.      It  Transmis- 
was  made  to  enter  into  the  considerations  affecting  s[ory°to''° 
the  probability  of  a  northwest  passage,  and  Samuel  '^.ter  times. 
Engle,  a  few  years  later,  in  1765,  discusses  it  and  marks  the 
supposed  course  of  the  Indians  in  a  map.    In  1777,  Moncacht's 
farthest  point  is  put  down  on  a  map  published  in  a  French 
encyclopaedia.    In  1829,  the  tale  was  translated  in  the  Proceed- 
ings of  the  Literary  and  Historical  Society  of  Quebec,  and 
during  the  discussion  of  the  Oregon  dispute  between  England 


214   THE  SEARCH  FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

and  the  United  States,  Greenliow  refers  to  the  story,  not  with- 
out an  inclination  to  believe  it.  It  got  for  the  first  time  what 
may  be  called  a  scientific  treatment  when  Quatref  ages,  in  the 
Revue  d' Anthroiiologie^  in  1881,  attracted  by  its  ethnological 
interest,  unwaveringly  accepted  it  as  an  honest  recital.  Still 
later,  Mr.  Hubert  Howe  Bancroft,  in  repeating  the  story,  is 
much  inclined  to  accept  the  same  conclusion.  A  weightier 
A  M  Da-  judgment  on  its  credibility  seems,  however,  to  have 
vis's  views,  ijggjj  reached  by  Mr.  Andrew  McFarland  Davis  in 
his  reexamination  of  it  after  Quatrefages's  essay.  This  critic, 
on  various  grounds,  pronounces  it  to  be  of  the  class  of  fictions 
of  which  Defoe's  Apimrition  of  Mrs.  Veal  is  a  conspicuous 
example.  He  judges  that  the  change  in  the  termination  which 
Le  Page  finally  gave  to  the  tale  arose  from  a  necessity  to  save 
it  from  the  discredit  into  which,  in  its  original  form,  it  would 
The  sea  of  havc  fallen  at  a  time  when  the  new  notions  of  Delisle 
the  west.  ^^^  Buachc  rcspcctiug  a  sea  of  the  west  were  dis- 
placing the  earlier  drafts  of  the  western  coast  lines.  Dumont 
had  given  his  adhesion  to  the  newer  views. 

There  is  no  occasion  in  the  present  chapter  to  go  into  the 
details  of  the  stories,  now  discredited,  of  Admiral  Fonte  and 
Maldonado,  who  were  said  to  have  made  inland  discoveries 
by  water  on  the  northwest  coast  in  the  region  where  we  now 
know  the  basin  of  the  Colmnbia  to  be  in  part.  These  stories 
showed  the  coast  hereabouts  to  have  been  intersected  by  large 
inland  seas  opening  on  the  west  to  the  Pacific,  and  affording 
passages  on  the  east  to  Hudson's  Bay  and  other  waters  of  the 
Supposabie  Atlantic  system.  The  wish  to  find  such  a  transverse 
cartography,  passage,  beginning  with  the  supposabie  Straits  of 
Anian  in  the  sixteenth  century,  had  never  ceased  to  guide  car- 
tographers to  point  out  the  way  in  which  it  might  exist,  if  they 
coidd  not  say  that  it  did  exist.  Bellin  had,  as  we  have  seen,  in 
these  middle  days  of  the  eighteenth  century  (1743),  connected 
Lake  Superior  —  which  he  was  inclined  to  put  too  far  north  by 
ten  degrees  —  by  a  water-way  with  the  Pacific,  and  a  little  later 
(1755),  when  the  new  views  were  overtopping  the  old,  he  conjec- 
tured that  over  the  mountains  there  might  be  a  possible  nearly 
landlocked  sea  of  the  west.  Le  Rouge,  another  French  map- 
maker,  made  a  similar  westward  connection  for  the  Great  Lakes 
in  1746. 


RIVER  OF  THE   WEST. 
[From  L'Amerique,  par  le  Sieur  le  Rouge,  suivant  le  R.  P.  Charlevoix,  etc.,  Paris,  1746.] 


216        THE  SEARCH   FOR    THE  SEA    OF  THE    WEST. 

It  was  shortly  after  1750  that  the  theory  of  these  great  inland 
seas  and  the  story  of  De  Fonte  captured  the  leading 
Buache,  French  geographer,  Delisle,  whose  maps  gained  cur- 
e  erys,  e  c.  ^^^^^  ^^^^  Central  Europc  by  the  republications  of 
Covens  and  Mortier  at  Amsterdam.  The  most  ardent  advo- 
cate of  these  views,  however,  was  Philippe  Buache,  and  some 
of  his  maps  are  a  marvel  of  reticulated  waters.  The  English 
geographer  Jefferys  was  tainted  with  the  rest,  but  he  was 
more  content  to  connect  in  his  own  mind  Lake  Winnipeg  with 
the  alleged  inland  discoveries  of  Aguilar  from  the  west.  This 
erratic  belief  died  hard,  and  lingered  on  in  the  maps  till  well 
toward  the  beginning  of  the  present  century.  In  the  Paris 
Atlas  Moderne  of  1762  and  1771  it  was  simplified  but  still 
existed,  as  it  did  in  the  Atlas  Nouveau  of  1779  and  1782. 

It  was  evident,  with  the  view  of  the  Pacific  coast  then  pre- 
Their  effect  vailiug,  that  the  simple  north  and  south  trend  and  the 
aSdhif'^^^  Columbia  valley  of  the  Moncacht-Ape  story  coidd 
story.  jjQ^  stand,  and  Le  Page  was  forced  either  to  abandon 

it,  or  join  the  opponents  of  the  new  theories.  He  did  the  last, 
and,  as  Mr.  Davis  thinks,  attributed  to  the  Indian  some  supposed 
experiences  on  the  coast,  the  better  to  maintain  his  narrative. 

With  the  breaking  out  of  the  war,  which  was  opened  by 
Washington  in  1754,  and  on  the  withdrawal  of  western 
tiufweft"  garrisons  beyond  what  was  sufficient  to  hold  vital 
points,  there  was  no  favorable  opportunity  during  the 
rest  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  pursue  the  discoveries  in  the 
direction  of  Verendrye's  farther  quest.  The  last  scheme  on 
record  was  probably  an  expedition  recommended  in  1753  by 
Colonel  Joshua  Fry  to  Governor  Dinwiddle,  in  which  one  already 
known  to  us,  Dr.  Thomas  Walker,  "  a  person  of  fortune  and 
great  activity,"  as  the  governor  calls  him,  was  to  have  the  com- 
mand. The  plan  was  to  cross  the  Alleghanies  and  discover 
the  hidden  water-way  to  the  great  sea.  The  impending  war 
prevented  the  expedition  starting,  but  the  chances  of  success 
as  they  lay  in  the  popular  mind  are  well  expressed  in  a  letter 
of  the  Huguenot,  James  Maury,  written  in  Virginia  in  1756 : 
"  When  it  is  considered  how  far  the  eastern  branches  of  that 
immense  river,  Mississippi,  extend  eastward,  and  how  near  they 
come  to  the  navigable,  or  rather  canoeable  parts  of  the  rivers 


MONCACHT-APE.  217 

which  empty  themselves  into  the  sea  that  washes  our  shores 
to  the  east,  it  seems  highly  probably  that  its  western  branches 
reach  as  far  the  other  way,  and  make  as  near  approaches  to 
rivers  emptying  themselves  into  the  ocean  west  of  us,  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  across  which  [approaches]  a  short  and  easy  com- 
munication, short  in  comparison  with  the  present  route  thither, 
opens  itself  to  the  navigator  from  that  shore  of  the  continent 
with  the  Eastern  Indies."  He  then  goes  on  to  show  how  the 
stories  which  Coxe  had  published  thirty  years  before,  of  early 
English  adventurers,  in  the  upper  Mississippi  basin,  were  hav- 
ing their  influence  in  confusing  the  common  belief.  "One  of 
the  branches  of  the  Mississippi,  Coxe  followed  through  its  vari- 
ous meanders  for  seven  hundred  miles  (which  I  believe  is  called 
Missouri  by  the  natives,  or  Red  River  from  the  color  of  its 
waters),  and  then  received  intelligence  from  the  natives  that  its 
head-springs  interlocked  on  a  neighboring  mountain  with  the 
head-springs  of  another  river  to  the  westward  of  these  same 
mountains,  discharging  itself  into  a  large  lake  called  Thoyago, 
which  pours  its  waters  through  a  large  navigable  river  into  a 
boundless  sea,  where  they  told  him  they  had  seen  prodigious 
large  canoes,  with  three  masts  and  men  almost  as  fair  as  himself." 
Then  making  a  palpable  reference  to  the  Moncacht-Ape  story, 
he  adds :  "  As  I  have  read  a  history  of  the  travels  of  an  Indian 
towards  those  regions,  as  well  as  those  of  Mr.  Coxe,  the  reports 
of  the  natives  to  both  of  them  as  to  the  large  canoes  are  so  simi- 
lar that  I  perhaps  may  confound  one  with  the  other."  Maury 
next  says  that  the  only  copy  of  Coxe's  "  very  scarce  "  book 
which  he  has  heard  of  in  Virginia  was  seen  by  him  at  Colonel 
Fry's  house,  and  this  leads  him  to  suspect  that  Coxe's  stories 
had  incited  Fry's  scheme  of  western  exploration,  to  which  ref- 
erence has  just  been  made.  Maury  tells  us  further  that  prepa- 
rations had  been  attentively  made  by  Walker,  so  as  to  reach 
an  estimate  of  the  expense,  when  the  outbreak  of  hostilities 
occurred.  There  were  some  reasons,  even  after  the  project  had 
been  abandoned,  for  concealing  the  purpose  from  the  French, 
and  Maury  informs  his  correspondent  that  "  in  case  the  shij)  I 
write  by  should  be  taken,  the  person  to  whom  I  have  recom- 
mended this  packet  has  instruction  to  throw  it  overboard  in 
time." 


CHAPTER  XI. 

WAR   AISTD  TRUCE. 

1741-1748. 

In  the  war  with  Spain,  England  had  suffered  in  America 
more  than  her  foes.     Vernon's  unfortunate  attack  on 
England  and  Cartagcua  (1741)  had  carried  to  the  grave  nine  out  of 
^*™  ten  of  the  contingent  which  the  colonies  had  added 

to  the  attacking  force.  The  loss  was  not  great  in  a  population 
now  approaching  a  million ;  but  it  was  discouraging.  The 
eleven  colonial  newspapers  published  along  the  Atlantic  sea- 
Govemor  board  kept  the  mishaps  from  being  forgotten.  Shir- 
shiiiey.  jgy.  ^^^  been  made  governor  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  — 
a  popular  man,  at  a  time  when  popularity  was  to  count  much. 
He  was  destined  to  become  conspicuous,  and  though  not  greatly 
more  than  respectable  in  ability,  he  had  some  qualities  which 
the  colonies  were  to  prize  in  the  near  future. 

Parliament  had  at  last  recognized  the  necessity  of  amalga- 
mating the  vast  alien  population  which  had  doubled  the  num- 
bers on  the  seaboard  in  a  little  more  than  a  score  of 
and  years.     It  provided  in  1740  that  Protestants  who  had 

been  seven  years  in  the  colonies  could  be  naturalized, 
but  in  New  England  the  law  had  little  effect.  The  religious  dis- 
tinction was  significant.  France  and  Spain  as  Catholic  powers 
were  pressing  hard  on  the  colonial  frontiers.  Local  legislation 
in  New  England  had  long  nurtured  Protestant  antipathies,  and 
there  was  a  gleesome  joy  among  the  Boston  people  when  Fleet 
the  printer  printed  —  as  the  story  goes  —  some  popular  ballads 
on  the  blank  side  of  a  bull  of  Pope  Urban,  of  which  a 
New  bale  had  been  captured  in  a  Spanish  prize.    The  New 

England  metropolis  was  now  in  her  proudest  days,  if 
the  pinnacle  to  which  commerce  may  lift  a  town  determines 
that  comparative  preeminence.     In  1741,  there  were  forty  top- 


THE  SPIRIT   OF  INDEPENDENCE.  219 

sail  vessels  on  the  stocks  in  Boston  shipyards,  and  this  meant 
an  active  leadership  in  all  places  where  there  was  trade  by  sea. 
There  was  no  enemy  of  England  in  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  or 
on  the  Spanish  main  which  the  privateers  of  New  England  did 
not  reach.  The  forests  of  New  Hampshire  afforded  the  best 
masts  that  a  royal  frigate  could  have.  In  every  eligible  harbor 
about  the  gulf  of  Maine  they  were  building  ships  for  the  Brit- 
ish navy  and  barkentines  for  the  English  merchants. 

It  was  in  New  England  that  the  crown  had  its  best  compacted 
body  of  subjects.  They  constituted  perhaps  two  fifths  of  all 
that  were  living  on  the  Atlantic  slope,  and  rarely  had  a  people 
developed  in   a  more  seK-contained  way.     They  had 

,  1  .  1       1      1  •  /•  •  •  1  The  spirit  of 

long  been  ui  the  habit  or  setting  up  pretensions  that  indepen- 
ill  became  dependent  colonies.  They  were  conscious, 
too,  of  a  certain  sympathy  for  these  aspirations  which  were  now 
and  then  manifested  in  the  advanced  sentiments  of  wary  Eng- 
lishmen. Murray  the  lawyer,  later  to  be  famous  as  Lord  Mans- 
field, was  becoming  known  in  his  opinions  upon  an  ominous 
constitutional  question.  He  held  that  the  king,  and  not  Parlia- 
ment, could  compel  a  colony  to  tax  itself  for  the  benefit  of  the 
whole.  Samuel  Adams,  prefiguring  the  colonial  claim,  was 
selecting  for  his  graduating  thesis  at  Harvard :  "  Whether  it 
be  lawful  to  resist  superior  magistrates,  if  the  Commonwealth 
cannot  be  otherwise  preserved." 

Kahn,  the  German  traveler,  shows  us  how,  a  little  later,  he 
was  conscious  that  this  feeling,  which  Samuel  Adams's  youthful 
ebullitions  indicated,  so  pervaded  the  colonies  that  he  felt  it 
was  only  the  necessity  of  combining  against  the  French  which 
could  insure  continued  dependence  on  the  mother  country. 
Joshua  Gee  had  already  thought  it  worth  his  while  to  array  the 
risks  in  order  to  disprove  them.  "  Some  gentlemen,"  he  had 
said,  "assert  that  if  we  encourage  the  plantations  they  will 
grow  rich  and  set  up  for  themselves  and  cast  off  the  English 
government."  But  he  looked  to  the  diverse  interests  and  jeal- 
ousies of  the  several  colonies  to  preserve  their  dependence  on 
the  mother  country.  It  was  these  disunited  interests  which 
made  the  Indians  liken  the  colonies  to  a  chain  of  sand,  and  Gee 
spoke  of  these  mutual  antipathies  as  making  the  colonies  "  like 
a  bold  and  rapid  river,  which,  though  resistless  when  inclosed 
in  one  channel,  is  yet  easily  resistible  when   subdivided    into 


220  WAR  AND   TRUCE. 

several  inferior  streams."  This  disagreement  among  the  several 
Lack  of  colonial  governments  had  indeed  become  notorious. 
the  Engii'sh  ^^  ^^^  ^^  ^^^^  almost  if  not  quite  impossible  to  induce 
colonies.  ^j^g  southcm  colouics  to  share  the  cost  borne  by  New- 
York  and  New  England  in  confronting,  for  the  benefit  of  all, 
the  French  from  Canada.  No  one  perceived  this  lack  of  ad- 
hesion more  clearly  than  the  Indians,  and  there  was  a  touch 
of  satire  in  the  Iroquois  when  they  advised  the  English  to  act 
in  such  concert  as  their  confederacy  was  accustomed  to  do. 

This  was  the  condition  of  the  British  colonies,  when  a  turn 
War  de-  ^^^  Europcau  politics  disclosed  a  new  drama  both  in 
ciared.  1744.  ^j^^  Qj^j  ^rQ^ld  aud  the  Ncw.  The  English  colonies, 
with  all  their  repellent  forces  mutually  exerted,  had  become 
prosperous  in  trade,  and  perhaps  the  more  so  because  of  an  ill- 
concealed  zest  in  thwarting  the  restraints  of  the  navigation  laws 
imposed  upon  them.  This  was  in  their  enterprises  by  sea ; 
those  by  land  were  making  the  French  believe  that  the  English 
activity  threatened  the  complete  absorption  of  the  western  fur 
trade. 

Golden,  in  preparing  a  new  edition  (1742)  of  his  History 
of  the  Five  Nations^  had  the  distinct  purpose  "  of  drawing  the 
attention  of  the  ministry  and  Parliament  to  the  interests  of 
North  America  in  respect  to  the  fur  trade,  and  the  encroach- 
ments which  the  French  are  daily  making  on  our  trade  and  set- 
tlements." At  the  same  time  Clinton  was  urging  the  occupa- 
tion of  Irondequoit  Bay  and  Crown  Point.  All  this  had  thrown 
the  French  into  a  sort  of  desperation,  when  their  antagonism 
was  intensified  by  the  declaration  of  war  in  Europe. 

Henry  Pelham  was  now  the  prime  minister  of  England. 
Dettingen  had  been  fought  in  June,  1743.  There  was  no  know- 
ing what  the  Pretender  might  attempt.  It  was  necessary  to 
keep  faith  with  Austria  and  the  other  supporters  of  the  Prag- 
matic Sanction,  and  this  brought  England  into  opposition  to 
France.  The  French  promptly  declared  war,  March  15,  1744, 
and  England  accepted  the  challenge  on  April  11.  Beaviharnois, 
the  Canadian  governor,  anticipating  war,  had  already  reinforced 
Crown  Point,  Fort  Frontenac,  and  Niagara.  He  had  for  the 
coming  struggle  perhaps  six  hmidred  regulars  and  some  fifteen 
thousand  Canadian  militia  all  told.  Such  a  force  could  be 
successfully  met  only  by  some    concert   of  action   among  the 


OSWEGO  ABANDONED,  221 

English,  aud  Governor  Clinton  was  urging,  with  little  chance 
of  success,  a  union  of  the  colonies. 

The  word  that  hostilities  were  determined  upon  reached  Can- 
ada in  the   spring  of  1744 :  but  it  was  not  till  June 
1  that  thev  knew  it  in  Boston.     This  priority  of  in-  hostiities 

reach 

formation  gave  the  French  some  advantage,  and  they  America. 
profited  by  it  in  Acadia,  They  were  hardly  prepared 
to  spring  upon  Oswego  in  this  same  interval,  though  the  Eng- 
lish later  wondered  they  had  not,  after  it  began  to  be  feared 
that  the  war  was  going  to  jeopardize  the  trade  at  that  post. 
The  stockade  there  had  been  suffered  to  decay,  and  two  years 
before  it  was  pronoimced  defenseless.  Governor  Clarke,  in  1743, 
had  feared  for  it  even  before  war  was  declared,  and  in  urging 
the  home  government  to  protect  it  better,  he  had  pictured  to 
them  the  disaster  which  would  follow  its  fall,  and  particularly 
the  alienation  of  the  Iroquois.  Now  upon  the  French  being 
earlier  informed  than  the  English  of  the  declaration  of  war,  the 
confederates  had  been  promptly  notified  by  messengers  from 
Quebec,  who  told  the  Indians  to  expect  a  sharp  contest  and  an 
easy  victory  for  the  French.     Before  the  summer  was 

OswecTO 

far  advanced,  the  English  traders  at  Oswego  became  abandoned 
alarmed  and  abandoned  it  in  a  body.  Governor  Clin- 
ton, when  he  heard  of  this  rapid  desertion,  dreaded  its  effect 
upon  the  western  Indians,  who  had  been  so  securely  held  by 
the  opportunities  of  trade  which  Oswego  offered.  Both  French 
and  English  hastened  to  send  emissaries  among  the  confeder- 
ates, the  one  to  use  the  flight  of  the  traders,  "  cowards  as  they 
are,"  as  signs  of  the  failing  fortunes  of  the  English,  and  the 
other  to  try,  but  unsuccessfully,  to  induce  these  Indians  to  hold 
that  post  against  the  French,  till  a  garrison  could  be  sent  there. 
So  the  summer  and  autumn  (1744)  passed,  and  the  hostile  forces 
had  not  confronted  one  another  in  the  field.  Meanwhile,  there 
was  far  from  confidence  in  the  authorities  at  Quebec,  who  were 
anxiously  looking  for  Boston  privateers  in  the  St.  Lawrence. 

The  next  year,  1745,  the  New  England  militia  under  Pep- 
perrell,  aided  by  some  royal  ships  under  Sir  Peter  War- 
ren, made  a  lucky   stroke  at  Louisbourg.      Shirley,  Louisbourg. 
whose  energy  and  luck  had  conduced  to  this  yeoman 
victory,  wrote    to   the    Earl  of  Newcastle  that  the  capture  of 
Louisbourg  had  secured  the  Newfoundland  fisheries  and  estab- 


222  WAR  AND   TRUCE. 

lished  a  nursery  for  seamen.  These  things,  he  contended,  made 
the  way  easy  to  master  the  northern  parts  of  America,  if  their 
success  were  promptly  followed  up  by  an  invasion  of  Canada. 
The  conquest  of  the  west  was  to  be  made  by  fighting  a  battle 
in  the  north. 

New  England  and  New  York  took  the  campaign  in  hand,  and 

troops  were  raised.  Newcastle  promised  to  support 
invasion  of     them  with  a  fleet.     While   these    preparations   were 

making,  there  were  vexatious  raids  all  along  the  New 
England  frontiers,  and  Fort  Massachusetts  was  taken.  The 
main  energy  of  suffering  New  England  was  directed  to  rein- 
forcing Clinton  for  an  advance  on  Crown  Point  and  Montreal. 
The  New  York  governor  had  sore  need  of  all  the  comfort  which 
New  York  Ncw  England  could  give  him.  His  assembly  were 
politics.  stubborn  in  their  opposition  to  liis  plans.  The  prov- 
ince had  a  chief  justice  in  De  Lancey  who,  in  efforts  to  embar- 
rass the  chief  magistrate,  knew  how  to  smirch  his  robes  with 
a  politician's  touch.  These  intestine  quarrels  demoralized  the 
militia  and  disconcerted  the  neighboring  confederates.  It  gave 
the  French  new  opportunities,  and  as  Franklin,  a  looker-on, 
said  of  the  Indians,  the  English  could  afford  "  to  spare  no  arti- 
fice, pains,  or  expense  to  gain  them." 

To  add  to  the  discouragement,  the  English  fleet,  expected 

at  Boston,  never  appeared.  Instead  of  the  stir  of 
alarmed.        Warlike  preparation  which  Boston  had  hoped  for  in 

her  harbor,  the  town  was  thrown  into  consternation 
from  an  expected  attack.  Shirley,  in  September,  1746,  learned 
that  a  French  fleet  under  Admiral  D'Anville  was  at  sea  with 
orders  to  attack  Boston  and  recover  Louisbourg.  The  troops 
sent  to  Clinton  were  hurriedly  returned  to  defend  the  coast. 
D'Anville's  ships  were  happily  scattered  in  a  storm,  and  Boston 
breathed  freer. 

Both  sides  had  failed  of  their  purpose,  and  the  western  ques- 
tion had  not  been  helped  to  a  solution.  There  was  a  suspicion 
that  the  backwardness  of  the  home  government  in  not  sending 
a  fleet  was  due  to  an  apprehension  that  another  success  like 
Louisbouro-  mioht  brino-  the  colonies  to  an  inordinate  sense  of 
their  importance.  Those  who  wished  to  keep  the  friendship  of 
the  Iroquois  and  the  more  distant  tribes  had  more  pressing 


GALISSONNIERE  223 

apprehensions  in  that,  as  Conrad  Weiser  expressed  it,  the  fail- 
ure of  the  expedition  to  Canada  "had  done  a  great  deal  of 
hurt,  since  no  man  is  able  to  excuse  it  to  the  Indians."  Weiser 
had  never  doubted  the  Iroquois  neutrality,  but  he  had  jjeutrai 
all  along  maintained  that  they  could  not  be  urged  to  Iroquois, 
active  hostilities  against  the  French,  and  the  untoward  cam- 
paign had  rendered,  to  some,  even  their  neutrality  uncertaiuo 
One  thing,  however,  had  happened  on  which  the  English  had 
reason  to  depend.  A  band  of  Chickasaws  had  come  north  eager 
to  WTeak  vengeance  on  the  French  for  some  affront  which  had 
been  put  upon  their  tribe.  This  opjjortunity  for  the  English 
had  influenced  the  Senecas,  usually  much  inclined  to  the  French, 
to  hold  back  from  aiding  them. 

With  all  this   inaction,  the  trans-AUeghany  question  grew 
more  and  more  complicated  for  the  English,  when  a  coWen's 
new  embarrassment  unexpectedly  occurred  in  the  luck-  f^oits^"^ 
less  phrasing  of  the  title  of  a  new  edition  of  Colden's  ®'^'  ^''^^• 
book  on  the  Five  Nations,  which  was  again  reprinted  in  London 
in  1747.     This  was  a  statement  that  the  "  Six  Nations  lived  in 
Canada,"  which  the  French  eagerly  seized  upon  as  an  acknow- 
ledgment that  the  Iroquois  country,  south  of  Ontario,  was  within 
the  bounds  of  Canada.  / 

There  came  a  vigorous  spirit  to  the  French  at  Quebec,  in  the 
person  of  their  new  governor,  Galissonniere,  who  ar-  oaiisson- 
rived  there  September  19,  1747,  to  assume  command  Canada. 
over  the  fifty  thousand  people  of  the  St.  Lawrence  ^'^^"' 
valley.  He  was  not  attractive  in  person ;  in  fact,  he  was  de- 
formed. His  mind,  however,  was  as  alert,  and  his  impidses  were 
as  steady,  as  was  befitting  a  commander  facing  great  odds.  He 
had  a  firm  purpose  to  check  the  English  wherever  he  coidd 
find  them  throughout  either  the  St.  Lawrence  or  the  Mississij)pi 
valley.  He  felt  equal  to  the  task  everywhere  except  by  sea, 
and  he  was  anxious  lest  Quebec  should  be  attacked  by  an  Eng- 
lish fleet.  So,  when  he  learned  of  Shirley's  hope  to  make  a 
winter  attack  on  Crown  Point,  it  caused  him  little  apprehen- 
sion, for  he  knew  New  York  had  no  desire  to  undertake  the 
task.  He  was  not  quite  prepared  to  plunge  upon  Oswego,  now 
reoccupied  by  the  English,  but  he  sought  to  intercept  its  trade 
by  founding  Fort  Kouille  at  the  modern  Toronto. 


224  WAR  AND   TRUCE. 

The  spring  and  summer  of  1748  were  rife  with  rumors  of 
peace,   and   William   Johnson  was    exerting   himself 

Johnson  and  i       r\  ^  £    •^     i  •  w 

the  Iroquois,  amoug  the  Ououdagas  to  toil  the  persistent  ettorts  of 
the  French  to  gain  them  over  in  a  body.  The  con- 
federates were,  in  July,  brought  to  a  coimcil  at  Albany  and 
urged  to  expel  the  French  emissaries  among  them,  and  to 
desist  from  their  incursions  against  the  western  tribes.  Weiser 
was  sent  among  these  Ohio  Indians  to  warn  them  against  too 
much  confidence  in  any  peace  which  the  French  prom- 

Weiserand       .  4-r>i  .  .  ,,  i 

the  Ohio        iscd.     "  A  J^  rciich  peace  is  a  very  uncertain  one,    he 

Indians.  i  i     i  mi  i  •  i  i      •      • 

told  them.  "  ihey  keep  it  no  longer  than  their  inter- 
est permits.  The  French  king's  people  have  been  almost 
starved  in  Old  France,  and  our  wise  people  are  of  the  opinion 
that  after  their  belly  is  full  again,  they  will  once  more  quarrel 
and  raise  a  war."     It  was  a  weighty  prophecy. 

The  French  had  among  them  in  Canada  another  person  who 
Abb6  was  quite  as  vigilant  and  far-seeing  as  Galissonniere, 

Piquet.  g^j-^^  ^jjjg  ^^g^g  ^Yie  Abbe  Piquet,  now  a  man  of  forty. 

The  governor  had  already  asked  (October,  1747)  the  minister 
to  give  him  a  pension  for  the  zeal  with  which  he  had  planned 
and  instigated  more  than  one  hostile  raid  upon  the  English 
borders.  The  main  object  of  this  wary  man  was  to  break  the 
alliance  of  the  Iroquois  with  the  English.  Already,  at  Caugh- 
nawaga,  near  Montreal,  about  three  hundred  Mohawks  and 
Oneidas  had  been  drawn  away  from  their  own  country  to  form 
a  settlement.  To  make  similar  drafts  upon  the  Onondagas, 
Cayugas,  and  Senecas  was  Piquet's  immediate  purpose,  and  in 
September,  1748,  he  set  out  from  Quebec  with  the  intention 
of  selecting  the  fittest  site  for  a  mission.  Not  long  after,  Galis- 
sonniere succeeded  in  drawing  deputies  from  the  confederates 
to  Quebec,  and  put  to  them  the  crucial  question  of  their  fealty 
to  the  English.  "  We  hold  our  lands  of  Heaven,"  they  said, 
"  and  have  never  ceded  any."  The  French  had  longed  for  just 
such  an  asseveration  to  meet  the  claims  of  the  Iroquois  sub- 
jection, now  constantly  advanced  by  the  English. 

But  this  and  all  other  questions  in  dispute  between  the  two 

crowns  were  studiously  ignored  by  the  diplomats  who 

Aix-ia-cha-    had  lust  succccded  in  patchins^  up  a  truce  in  which 

peUe.     1748.  *"  ^  . 

neither  j^arty  had  any  confidence.     This  truce,  called 


PIQUET  AND  LA   PRESENTATION.  225 

the  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  consummated  October  7, 1748,  was 
proclaimed  in  Montreal  July  27,  1749,  but  it  had  been  known 
in  Boston  in  the  previous  May,  —  a  new  instance  of  the  disad- 
vantage to  Canada,  during-  a  large  part  of  the  year,  in  being- 
shut  off  from  communication  with  France  by  an  ice-locked  river. 

The  peace  broke  up  the  alliance  of  England  and  Austria.  It 
secured  for  England  a  renewal  of  her  profits  in  the  West  India 
slave  trade.  It  restored  to  France  all  that  she  had  lost  at  Louis- 
bourg  and  elsewhere.  The  claims  of  the  French  against  the 
pretensions  of  the  English  sea-to-sea  charters  were  left  untouched, 
and  the  dispute  over  the  barrier  of  the  Appalachians  remained 
unsettled. 

No  one  understood  this  dubious  outcome  of  the  war  better 
than  the  little  humpbacked  governor  at  Quebec.  He  knew  that 
it  gave  to  his  countrymen  a  breathing-time,  so  that  they  might 
the  better  prepare  for  the  final  struggle  in  the  Great  Valley. 
He  began  now,  with  a  finer  appreciation  of  the  true 

1        .    .  .    .        T  PI-  1  Galisson- 

colonizmo-  spirit  than  any  oi  his  predecessors,  except,  mere  and  the 

^  ^11.1111  ,  .     ,         Ohio  valley. 

perhaps,  Champlam,  had  had,  to  urge  upon  the  minis- 
ters the  sending  of  sturdy  peasants  to  occupy  the  Ohio  valley. 
But  he   asked  in  vain,  while  in  the  same  hour  the  flower  of 
France,  in  her  Huguenots,  were  being  hunted  down  and  allowed 
no  asylum  even  in  her  colonies. 

Piquet's  aims  were,  in  some  sense,  the  complement  of  those  of 
Galissonniere,  and  he  had  now  selected  a  spot  for  his 
mission  at  La  Presentation,  near  the  site  of  the  future  La  Presen- 
Ogdensburg  on  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  position  was 
well  chosen,  since  it  covered  the  Indian  trails  both  north  and 
south  of  Lake  Ontario.  It  was  further  well  placed  in  being-  at 
the  mouth  of  a  stream  which  had  its  source  near  the  Mohawks, 
and  which  was  a  ready  route  for  their  canoes  to  the  St.  Law- 
rence. The  Mohawks,  being  i3erhaps  the  most  persistent  in  the 
English  interest  of  all  the  confederates,  soon  fell  upon  the  little 
post  (November,  1749).  This  led  to  a  reinforcement,  and  the 
missionary  was  aided  by  the  Quebec  government  to  construct  a 
palisade,  mount  a  few  guns,  and  build  magazines  and  a  mill.  In 
a  year  or  two,  Piquet  saw  a  colony  of  eager  converts  clustered 
around  him.  The  civil  authorities  found  in  this  mission  of  the 
church  a  new  help  to  divert  the  Indian  trade  from  Oswego, 
since  it  added  another  station  on  the  way  to  Montreal. 


li(feoAl'ii 


Coxjnhi'y  of -j^ 
jNipifsing- 


lioaAan. Afeg-.'/VT-  OecT  //'/^  ^ 


Ji(^4fi£r,  Jf^/f»in  ZtOTicior^ 


228  WAR   AND  TRUCE. 

To  increase  his  dependents,  Piquet  later  (June,  1751)  made 
the  circuit  of  Lake  Ontario  in  a  boat  to  pick  up  adherents,  and 
they  in  the  end  became  so  numerous  —  chiefly  Onondagas  and 
Cayugas  —  that  at  times  he  successfully  disputed  the  influence 
of  William  Johnson  among  those  tribes. 

Bigot,  who  had  come  to  the  colony  as  intendant,  encouraged 
the  undertaking  as  affording  a  base  for  a  future  attack 
on  Oswego,  "  a  post  the  most  pernicious  to  France  that 
the  English  could  erect."  But  Bigot's  influence  was  one  of 
peril,  as  the  sequel  showed.  He  reflected,  in  these  later  years 
of  the  French  power,  the  brilliant  frivolities,  the  whimsical  ca- 
prices, the  mischief  and  vanity  into  which  French  history  was 
transformed  by  Louis  XV.  and  the  Pompadour.  Voltaire  and 
Po^gj,  f,f  Montesquieu  were  unheeded ;  but,  nevertheless,  France 
France.  ^^^  g^'jj  imposing,  and  the  Bourbons  as  a  family  were 
powerful.  France  could  lay  one  hand  on  India,  and  as  yet  the 
other  covered  the  major  part  of  North  America.  Her  military 
prowess  had  failed  rather  in  her  officers  than  in  her  men.  The 
king  made  bureaucracy  a  potent  agency,  and  it  cared  as  little 
for  the  nobles  as  it  did  for  the  rabble.  Such  were  France  and 
New  France  when  the  peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  left  both  mother 
country  and  province  with  a  struggle  to  come. 

On  the  whole,  England  could  face  this  coming  trial  with  little 
Condition  of  Confidence.  Her  army  and  navy  gave  small  hope. 
England.  There  was  but  scant  virility  in  her  social  conditions. 
Mediocrity  and  corruption  were  hardly  less  patent  than  they 
were  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel.  Scandal  and  turpitude 
easily  made  heroes.  Gossip  was  deadly.  Beau  Nash  was  as 
baleful,  though  in  a  different  way,  as  John  Law  had  been  in 
Paris.  The  clergy  were  menial.  Highwaymen  had  their  Lives 
written.  The  royal  family  was  bickering  like  the  common  herd. 
But  William  Pitt  was  ripening. 


CHAPTEK  XII. 

THE  PORTALS  OF  THE  OHIO  VALLEY. 

1740-1749. 

Already,  by  1740,  in  the  valley  of  Virginia,  In  addition  to 
the    patents   of    Beverly    and  Borden,  various    small 

1  .7  '  Valley  of 

grants  had  been  made  by  Governor  Blair.  Log  dwell-  Virginia. 
ings  were  springing  up  here  and  there  as  the  Seotch- 
■  Irish  and  Germans  spread  along  the  banks  of  the  Shenandoah. 
The  valley  was  spotted  with  tomahawk  claims,  as  squatters'  rights 
were  termed,  traceable  for  years  by  the  lighter  color  of  the 
wound  made  by  the  woodsman's  hatchet  on  the  boundary  trees. 
There  were  no  wagon  roads  as  yet,  but  bridle  paths  went  from 
house  to  house,  and  led  up  to  the  eastern  passes,  where  the  buffalo 
had  once  made  their  traces.  Hither,  on  court  days,  the  frontiers- 
men went  to  the  more  civilized  centres  toward  the  rivers  which 
flowed  into  the  Chesapeake,  where  along  their  banks  an  Angli- 
can governing  clan  held  the  country.  The  best  traveled  trail 
came  from  the  north,  and  crossing  the  Fluvanna,  a  headstream 
of  the  James,  foimd  its  way  by  the  defile  of  the  Staunton  River, 
and  then  turned  south.  It  next  passed  the  Dan,  and  came  to 
the  Yadkin,  a  river  which,  rising  in  North  Carolina,  joins  the 
Pedee  and  then  seeks  the  ocean. 

Colonel  Abraham  Wood  had  led  an  expedition  up  the  Dan, 
a  branch  of  the  Roanoke,  in  1744.     Passing  the  Blue 
Ridge  by  what  came  to  be  known  as  Wood's  Gap,  he  Abraham 
followed  on  the  other  side  a  stream  which  flowed  into  Kanawha. 
the  New  River,   and  thus  opened  one  of  the  upper 
routes  to  the  Kanawha,  an  affluent  of  the  Ohio.     It  was  twenty 
years  before  this  that  Joshua  Gee  had  urged  the  planting  of 
colonies  beyond  these  mountains,  but  only  now,  in  1748,  was  a 
way  opened  to  induce  the  earliest  English  settlement,  with  do- 
mestic life,  beyond  the  Alleghanies. 


230  THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

The  Lords  of  Trade  had  urged  the  Privy  Coimcil  to  author- 
ize the  governor  of  Viroinia  to  make  "rants  of  land 

Settlers  in         ,  ,.        t  .  ^r-       •     •       i       i  i-  •  i 

the  valley  of    in  this  direction.      Virginia  had  at  this  time  about 

eighty-two  thousand  inhabitants  ;  but  only  a  few  hun- 
dred had  as  yet  made  a  movement  into  the  Shenandoah  valley, 
and  there  was  just  now  a  purpose  shown  to  cross  the  inner 
chain  of    the  Appalachians,     There  had  already  been  grants 

of  land  made  beyond  the  mountains  to  Dr.  Thomas 
expiora-        Walker,  Colonel  James  Wood,  Colonel  James  Patton, 

and  others ;  and  Walker  organized  a  party  to  make 
explorations  thitherward.  They  entered  Powell's  valley  near 
Laurel  Ridge,  and  pushed  westward  beyond  the  sources  of  the 
Clinch  River.  They  were  mindful  enough  of  the  proud  duke 
who  had  crushed  the  Scots'  rebellion,  to  place  the  name  of 
Cumberland  on  the  gap  and  river,  which  they  were  the  first  to 
find.  They  turned  northeast  and  reached  the  springs  of  the 
Big  Sandy  River,  passed  on  to  the  Louisa  Fork,  and  then  wended 
their  way  eastward  to  New  River.  Walker  was  enabled  thus 
to  be  of  assistance  to  Evans  in  the  mapping  of  this  region  at  a 

later  day.     The  result  of  this  movement  was  the  incor- 

Loyal  Land  ,  •  -i      a 

Company.  poratiou  of  tlic  Loyal  Land  Company  in  June,  1749, 
which  had  a  grant  of  eight  hundred  thousand  acres 
above  the  North  Carolina  line  and  west  of  the  mountains.  In 
the  November  following.  Governor  Lee  of  Virginia  informed 
Governor  Harrison  of  Pennsylvania  of  these  and  other  grants, 
and  of  his  purpose  to  assist  the  pioneers  in  establishing  a  settle- 
ment and  building  a  fort.  He  at  the  same  time  complained  of 
the  traders  of  Pennsylvania,  who  incited  the  Indians  to  mis- 
chief. He  added  that  in  view  of  the  threatening  attitude  of 
France,  it  behooved  both  provinces  to  stand  united  in  making 
this  western  progress. 

On  the  divide  between  the  upper  waters  of  the  Roanoke  and 
Draper's  ^^w  Rivcr  was  a  beautiful  intervale,  the  pasturing 
Meadows.  grouud  of  large  game,  known  as  Draper's  Meadows. 
The  local  antiquaries  hold  that  shortly  after  the  return  of 
Walker's  party,  the  Inglis  family  and  others  passed  over  to  the 
New  River  side  of  the  divide  and  formed  a  settlement.  It  was 
here,  in  1749,  that  the  house  of  Adam  Harmon  was  attacked 
by  the  Indians,  the  earliest  instance  of  such  devastation  west  of 
the  mountains.     The  Draper's  Meadows  settlement  lay  to  the 


232  THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

north  of  the  line  run  in  1749  by  Colonel  Joshua  Fry  and  Peter 
Jefferson,  —  father  of  Thomas,  —  which  separated  Virginia  from 
Carolina,  and  was  not  yet  carried  farther  west,  athwart  the 
sources  of  the  Tennessee. 

More  to  the  north,  and  well  within  the  valley  of  Virginia, 
there  were  at  the  same  time  other  and  unknown  wanderers, 
The  Green-  Pushing  aloug  bcyoud  the  springs  of  the  James  and 
brier  River,  g^ossing  the  height  of  land  which  brought  them  upon 
the  river  later  known  as  the  Greenbrier,  —  opening  still  another 
route  to  the  Kanawha  and  the  Ohio.  We  have  seen  that  far- 
ther down  the  Shenandoah  and  beyond  a  transverse  line  which 
connected  the  sources  of  the  Rappahannock  and  the  Potomac, 
Fairfax  ^^^  manor  of  Lord  Fairfax  stretched  across  the  valley, 
manor.  While    tlicsc    piouccrs    farther    south    were  working 

westward,  the  young  George  Washington,  dragging  a  survey- 
or's chain,  was  wandering  over  the  five  or  six  million  acres 
which  constituted  this  nobleman's  estate.  The  youthful  sur- 
veyor says  he  was  struck  "  with  the  trees  and  richness  of  the 
land,"  during  his  summer's  work  in  marking  out  the  spaces  of 
this  vast  domain. 

The  English  claim  toward  the  west,  based  on  their  sea-to-sea 
charters,  was  at  best  illusory,  but  in  New  York,  in  Vir- 
Bea-to-sea  giuia,  and  in  the  colonies  farther  south,  it  nevertheless 
western  was  of  coustant  interest  as  the  warrant  for  this  western 
progress.  Massachusetts  was  to  find  a  like  interest  be- 
fore the  century  closed,  —  as  Connecticut  was  finding  one  even 
now,  —  but  in  this  earlier  half  of  the  century  New  England  was 
thinking  more  of  what  might  come  from  a  western  trade  than 
from  jurisdiction  which  she  could  not  enforce.  It  is  noticeable 
that  Dr.  Douglass  of  Boston,  when  he  wrote  on  the  subject,  was 
quite  content  with  the  line  of  the  Appalachians,  if  the  trade 
with  the  Chickasaws  and  Cherokees  could  only  be  assured. 
Another  Bostonian,  Dr.  Franklin,  now  became  prominent  in 
Pennsylvania  politics,  and  a  resident  of  a  province  which  had  a 
definite  western  limit  by  charter  had  much  less  difficulty  than 
a  Virginian  would  have  felt  in  coming  to  the  conclusion  that, 
after  all,  these  sea-to-sea  charters  were  awkward,  and  the  AUe- 

NoTE.     The  opposite  map  is  from  Fry  and  Jefferson's  Map  of  Virginia,  1751.     It  shows  the 
lower  Shenandoah,  the  Fairfax  residence,  and  the  wagon  road  from  Philadelphia. 


234  THE  PORTALS    OF   THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

ghanies  were  a  natural  limit  to  the  Atlantic  colonies.  But  he 
by  no  means  denied  the  right  of  the  crown  to  the  trans- Alle- 
ghany region.  He  was  indeed  a  strenuous  advocate 
views  on  the  of  ucw  colouics,  with  ucw  bouuds,  bcyoud  the  moun- 
tains, to  be  maintained  as  barriers  against  the  French. 
To  those  who  would  listen,  he  pictured  the  vast  fertility  of  these 
distant  valleys  and  the  alluring  possibilities  of  a  great  system 
of  inland  navigation.  He  saw  no  reason  why,  in  a  century,  this 
vast  area  of  the  Ohio  and  beyond  might  not  become  a  populous 
domain  "  either  to  England  or  to  France."  He  was  alarmed 
at  the  French  encroachments  upon  it,  and  advocated,  as  we  shall 
see,  the  setting  up  of  two  strong  English  colonies  between  Lake 
Erie  and  the  Ohio,  so  as  to  protect  the  back  settlements  of  Penn- 
sylvania, Virginia,  and  Carolina,  and  also  to  prevent  "  the 
dreaded  junction  of  Canada  and  Louisiana." 

The  English  had  for  a  time  found  it  more  profitable  to  base 
other  claims,  as  we  have  already  mentioned  and  shall  more 
fully  explain  in  another  chapter,  upon  the  surrender  by  the 
Iroquois  of  jurisdiction  over  a  vast  western  country.  It  is 
quite  uncertain  if  the  confederates  understood  this  concession 
as  the  English  did,  and  the  latter  claimed  that  the  French  had 
unconditionally  recognized  this  acquired  right  in  the  treaty  of 
Utrecht  (1713)  ;  but  the  French  professed  certainly 
Iroquois  to  think  othcrwisc.  Coldeu  had  set  forth  this  Anglo- 
Iroquois  claim  as  based  on  the  conquest  of  the  country 
by  the  confederates  "  about  the  year  1666,"  when,  "  amply  sup- 
plied by  the  English  with  firearms,  they  gave  a  full  swing  to 
their  warlike  genius  and  carried  their  arms  as  far  south  as 
Carolina,  and  as  far  west  as  the  river  Mississippi,  over  a  vast 
country,  which  extended  twelve  hundred  miles  in  length  from 
north  to  south,  and  about  six  hundred  in  breadth,  where  they 
entirely  destroyed  whole  nations,  of  whom  there  are  no  accounts 
remaining  among  the  English."  When,  in  1755,  the  English 
were  fairly  embarked  in  their  final  struggle  with  France, 
Mitchell,  the  geographer,  claimed  that  "  the  Six  Nations  have 
extended  their  territory  to  the  river  Illinois  ever  since  1672, 
when  they  subdued  and  incorporated  the  ancient  Chaouanons 
[Shawnees].  .  .  .  Beside  which  they  exercise  a  right  of  con- 
quest over  the  Illinois  and  all  the  Mississippi,  as  far  as  they  ex- 
tend.    This  was  confirmed  by  their  own  claims  to  possession  in 


TREATY   OF  LANCASTER.  235 

1742  [at  the  treaty  in  Philadelphia],  and  none  have  ever  thought 
fit  to  dispute  thoni.  .  .  .  The  Ohio  Indians  are  a  mixed  tribe 
of  the  several  Indians  of  our  colonies,  settled  here  under  the 
Six  Nations,  who  have  always  been  in  alliance  and  subject  to 
the  English."  ^ 

There  was  an  unfortunate  encounter  of  the  Virginia  militia 
with  the  Iroquois  in  the  valley  of  the  Shenandoah  in  virRinians 
1742,  which  for  a  while  boded  mischief.  The  confed-  iroquoL. 
erates  claimed  a  reserved  right  to  a  passage  south  for  ^^^"' 
their  war  parties  against  the  Catawbas,  along  the  most  westerly 
wall  of  the  mountains,  and  had  demanded  that  the  English 
refrain  from  settling  along  that  trail.  This  had  been  agreed  to 
by  Spotswood,  in  consideration  of  their  warriors  not  attempt- 
ing to  follow  their  older  path  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  valley. 
The  promise  had  not  been  kept,  and  a  skirmish  occurred.  The 
Virginians  claimed  that  the  Iroquois  had  agreed  (1741)  not  to 
molest  the  Catawbas,  and  but  for  their  failure  to  keep  their 
promise,  there  would  have  been  no  difficulty.  The  confederates 
replied  that  the  Catawbas  had  not  come  to  them  to  confirm  the 
peace,  as  the  English  had  promised  they  would,  but  had  sent 
taunting  messages.  The  encoimter  destroyed  confidence  on 
both  sides,  and  the  Indians  sent  messengers  to  the  Ottawas 
asking  them  to  join  in  resisting  the  English  if  they  sought  to 
avenge  their  loss.  The  Virginians,  however,  preferred  to  allay 
the  feeling  by  giving  some  presents. 

Underlying  it  all,  however,  was  a  deeper  question,  which 
pertained  to  the  rights  of  the  Iroquois  to  be  compensated  by  the 
English  for  the  occupation  of  these  mountainous  regions.  The 
confederates  had  already  been  thinking  of  the  French  as  a 
resort  in  case  of  need.  Governor  Clarke  was  reporting  how 
"  complacent  these  Indians  now  were  to  the  French,  but  only 
through  fear,  knowing  them  to  be  a  treacherous  and  enterpris- 
ing people."' 

To  settle  this  question  of  compensation,  and  to  elicit  further 
confirmation  of  the  savages'  friendship  and  land  ces- 
sions, the  English  had  determined  vipon  a  new  confer-  Lancaster. 
ence.  All  the  confederated  tribes,  except  the  Mohawks, 
met  at  Lancaster,  Pennsylvania,  with  the  commissioners  from 
Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  and  Virginia.     The  meetings  began  on 


236  THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

June  22,  and  were  continued  to  July  4,  1744.  Conrad  Weiser 
The  Mon-  "^^^  present  as  the  principal  interpreter  for  the  English, 
tours.  \^yy^  ^]jg  Indians  had   a  witness  in   Madam  Montour, 

the  half-breed  captive  of  the  Indians,  who  was  now  a  woman  of 
sixty.  Her  usual  attendant,  her  son  Andrew,  was  now  absent, 
on  the  warpath  against  the  Catawbas,  by  whom  his  father  had 
been  killed  a  few  years  before. 

The  commissioners  from  Virginia  professed  to  the  Indians 
The  Indian  *^^^  thcsc  wcstcm  lauds  wcrc  without  occupants  when 
the^Eugiiah  t^^y  fi^^*  knew  them.  They  added  that  the  English 
claims.  king  "held  Virginia  by  right  of  conquest,  and  the 

bounds  of  that  conquest  to  the  westward  is  the  great  sea." 
The  Iroquois's  answer  had  the  dignity  of  truth  and  good  man- 
ners :  "  Though  great  things  are  well  remembered  among  us, 
yet  we  don't  remember  that  we  were  ever  conquered  by  the 
great  king  [of  England],  or  that  we  have  been  employed  by 
that  great  king  to  conquer  others.  If  it  was  so,  it  was  beyond 
our  memory."  It  is  safe  to  say  it  is  beyond  the  cognizance  of 
the  historian,  who  knows  that  truth  is  not  necessarily  an  essen- 
tial of  a  treaty-speech.  "  All  the  world  knows,"  exclaimed  a 
chief,  "  that  we  conquered  these  lands,  and  if  ever  the  Virginians 
get  a  good  title  to  them  they  must  get  it  through  us." 

When  the  Maryland  commissioners  claimed  that  they  had 
owned  their  lands  a  hundred  years,  an  Iroquois  chief  laughed, 
and  said  his  people  had  owned  them  for  much  longer  than  a 
hundred  years,  and  it  was  these  Potomac  lands  which  they 
asked  pay  for. 

The  conference  ended  in  the  payment  of  X400  by  the  English, 
Deed  given  ^^^  ^^^  dccds  werc  passcd  for  an  indefinite  extent  of 
by  Indians,  territory  west  of  the  Alleghanies.  Both  savage  and 
white  knew  perfectly  well  that  the  title  they  passed  and  received 
was  a  dubious  one,  for  it  was  contested  by  other  tribes  of  Indi- 
ans, as  well  as  by  the  French.  It  answered,  however,  the  Eng- 
lish purpose  to  have  their  right  substantiated  against  their 
rivals  by  documentary  records  of  some  sort. 

Note.  The  map  on  the  opposite  page  is  from  Fry  and  Jefferson's  3Iap  of  Virginia,  showing 
Beverly  manor  and  the  upper  valley  of  the  Shenandoah.  To  the  right  of  the  dotted  "  Boundary 
Line  "  is  Lord  Fairfax's  manor,  embracing  the  lower  valley  of  the  Shenandoah.  The  river  sources 
near  the  "  Calf-pasture  "  are  those  of  the  upper  aflBuents  of  the  James  River,  beyond  the  Blue 
Ridge.  The  road  allowed  by  the  Indians  at  the  treaty  of  Lancaster  in  1744,  beginning  in  Virginia, 
followed  down  the  Shenandoah  valley  and  passed  on  to  Philadelphia. 


238  THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

The  treaty  also  confirmed  to  them  the  right  to  a  great  wagon 
Road  and  road,  Starting  from  Philadelphia,  and  passing  through 
*"■*"•  Lancaster   and   York  to  the  Potomac  at  Williams's 

Ferry.  Thence  it  ran  up  the  valley  of  Virginia  to  Winchester, 
and  then  followed  an  Indian  trail  still  farther  south. 

The  Virginia  commissioners,  in  presenting  their  case,  traced 
The  Virginia  hack  their  alliance  with  the  Indians  to  treaties  fifty- 
demands,  eight  and  seventy  years  earlier,  "  when  we  and  you 
became  brethren."  There  are  two  passages  in  the  speeches  that 
were  interchanged  which  are  significant  in  the  English  mouth, 
and  pathetic  in  the  savage.  The  commissioners  reminded  them 
that  the  tribes  had  agreed,  in  a  treaty  with  Governor  Spotswood, 
not  to  come  east  of  the  mountains,  while  the  Virginians  on  their 
part  pledged  themselves  not  to  let  these  tidewater  Indians  pass 
the  other  way  ;  but  the  commissioners  added  that  this  could  be 
no  bar  to  the  English  themselves  passing  west.  The  Indians  in 
reply  referred  to  their  concessions  of  land,  and  said,  with  an 
emotion  easily  understood:  "What  little  we  have  gained  from 
selling  the  land  goes  soon  away ;  but  the  land  which  you  gain 
lasts  forever !  " 

This  meeting  at  Lancaster  was  the  first  considerable  confer- 
Pennsyi-  cucc  that  had  been  held  in  Pennsylvania.  It  showed 
vania.  j^^^  ^^  Quaker  province  had  come  into  prominence 

in  its  rivalry  with  New  York.  The  over-mountain  trade  was 
making  the  Pennsylvania  settlements  prosperous.  Lancaster 
had  a  population  busy  in  the  making  of  pack-saddles.  The 
Germans  now  far  outnumbered  the  original  English  stock,  and 
they  had  been  largely  recruited,  as  we  have  seen,  from  the  dis- 
contented Palatines  of  the  Mohawk.  A  pampldeteer  of  the 
day  reflected  a  current  opinion  when  he  spoke  of  this  accession 
of  aliens  as  "  a  happy  event,  which  no  nation  except  England 
ever  met  with,  in  having  the  power  to  raise  a  great  empire  in 
America  without  draining  the  country  of  its  useful  subjects." 

These  Pennsylvania  Dutch,  as  they  were  colloquially  called, 
had  come  from  countries  where  the  roads  were  good.  They  had 
accordingly  given  to  the  highways  of  their  new  home  a  part  of 
the  excellence  they  had  been  accustomed  to  in  the  Old  World. 
These  roads  all  converged  from  the  west  upon  Philadelphia,  now 
a  town  of  thirteen  thousand  souls.  Thither  the  traders'  wagons 
came  from  the  Indian  country,  bringing  peltry  and  news. 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA   PASSES.  239 

The  most  important  position  in  this  country  for  communicat- 
ing with  the  distant  tribes  was  at  the  forks  of  the  shamokin,- 
Susquehanna,  whence  the  Ohio  trail  ran  up  the  west  tlj®  sub^ue- 
brauch,  and  crossing  the  mountains  reached  Kittan-  ^^'^^' 
ning  on  the  Alleghany.  Here  at  Shamokin,  as  the  forks  were 
called,  lived  Shikelliniy,  an  Oneida  chief,  —  father  of  Logan, 
later  celebrated,  —  who,  in  the  name  of  the  Iroquois,  exercised 
a  sort  of  lordship  over  the  tribes  hereabouts  tributary  to  the 
Iroquois.  He  had  acquired  a  good  name  with  the  English  as  a 
gracious  mediator,  and  when  he  died,  December  17,  1748,  Zeis- 
berger  and  his  Moravians  tenderly  buried  him. 

A  scandalous  act  of  Thomas  Penn  some  years  back  (1737) 
had  asserted  inordinate  claims  to  land  by  virtue  of  The  walking 
what  was  known  as  the  "  Walking  Purchase."     The  P"''«'^^»«- 
extent  of  the  concession  was  dependent  on  the  distance  a  man 
could  walk  in  a  day  and  a  half  by  an  honest  tramp.     By  trick 
and  sly  advantages  practiced  by  Penn's  agents,  the  j.i,g 
Delawares'  favorite  haunts  were  brought  within  this  ^^'^^^'^s. 
English  acquisition.     The  poor  creatures  persisted  in  retaining 
occupancy  of  their  ovni,  and  Penn  called  upon  the  Iroquois  to 
eject  them,  which  in   subserviency  they  did.     A  part  of  this 
distressed   people    then    scattered    into   the    Wyoming   valley, 
whence  they   drove  out  some  ubiquitous   Shawnees,  who  hap- 
pened to  be  there.     They  were  in  turn  pushed  out  by  the  Eng- 
lish, and  in  1740  they  had  resolved  to  cross  the  mountains  and 
join  the  Wyandots  on  the  Muskingum.     Other  portions  of  the 
Delawares  lingered  upon  the  Juniata,   among  some  -rijg 
other  Shawnees  who  were  seated  there  as  tributaries  •'™'^*^- 
of  the   Iroquois  ;  but  it  was  not  long  before  the  confederates 
complained  to  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania  that  English  set- 
tlers were  crowding  these  dependents,  and  that  the  English 
agents  who  were  sent  to  dislodge  the  settlers  had  become  so 
enchanted  with  the  country  as  to  become  settlers  there  them- 
selves. 

The  increasing  trade  by  which  Pennsylvania  was  profiting 
carried  with  it  all  the  demoralizing  influences  of  a 

,  11  ifi  -nr  PI  1  "^^^  traders, 

tramc  beyond  the  reach  of  law.     Many  of  the  traders 

Note.     The  map  on  the  following  pages  is  a  part  of  A  Map  of  Pensilvania,  New  Jersey,  New 
York,  and  the  Three  Delaware  Counties,  by  Lewis  Evans,  MDCCXLIX, 


>%/"»,■■  ;5».        ^'      S=»   "-.''»  '""u.     '      \  ^ 


Iff 


^ 


"iiiiiiiiiii'iiiii"""' 


242  THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

deserved  the  name  which  Franklin  gave  them,  of  being  "  the 
most  vicious  and  abandoned  wretches  of  our  nation."  The  gov- 
ernor of  the  province  had  more  than  once,  in  reference  to  these 
fellows,  warned  the  assembly  that  it  might  become  necessary 
to  prohibit  individual  ventures  in  this  traffic  and  make  it  a 
government  monopoly.  The  savages  had  come  to  believe,  under 
the  pernicious  habits  prevailing,  that  the  white  man's  religion 
was  rum  and  debauchery.  When  the  New  Engiander,  Sargeant 
of  Stockbridge,  had  come  among  them,  the  Indians  had  scorned 
the  instruction  which  he  offered.  It  was  apt  to  be  thus  that 
the  English  trader  blasted  the  hopes  of  the  Protestant  mission- 
2ixy.  It  was  as  a  ride  otherwise  with  the  influence  of  the  French 
and  the  trader  on  the  mission  of  the  Jesuit  and  Capuchin, 
priests.  Still,  Catholicism  as  well  as  Protestantism  was  not 
without  trial  in  the  presence  of  the  bushrangers  of  either  nation. 
Franklin  recognized  this  difficulty  when  he  proposed  to  hold 
the  tribes  in  the  English  interest  by  a  trained  militia,  so  as  to 
protect  both  white  and  savage  from  the  evils  of  the  frontier. 
The  Quaker  assembly  of  Pennsylvania  had  persistently  opposed 
all  military  legislation,  and  Franklin  effectively  answered  their 
arguments  in  his  Plain   Truth  (1746).     The  Germans,  who 

had  no  aversion  to  powder,  were  fast  becoming  a  power 
of  Pennsyi-    in  the   asscmbly,   and   in  the  dozen  years   following, 

and  under  renewed  stress  of  danger,  something  like 
fifty  stockades  were  built  along  the  Pennsylvania  borders.  But 
dread  of  danger  had  long  called  for  vigilance  in  a  community 
that  could  perpetrate  a  "Walking  Purchase."  The  story  of 
that  disgraceful  deceit  was  spread  easily  among  indignant  tribes, 
and  was  known  beyond  the  mountains.  In  November,  1747,  an 
attempt  was  made  to  soothe  a  deputation  of  chiefs  from  the 
Ohio  tribes,  in  a  conference  at  Philadelphia.  These  Indians 
were  bold  enough  to  tell  the  commissioners  that  if  they  pitted 
the  tribes  against  the  French  on  the  Ohio,  the  least  they  could 

do  was  to  aid  them  in  the  imposed  task.  This  failure 
and  the         of  the  Euglisli  to  support  the  Indians  in  wars  which 

the  savages  undertook  for  the  defense  of  the  colonies 
was  nothing  new.  The  constancy  of  support  which,  under 
similar  circumstances,  the  French  afforded  their  Indian  allies 
had  not  a  little  to  do  with  the  way  in  which  the  French  for 
many  years  combated  so  successfully  the  far  more  numerous 


THE   TWIGHTWEES.  243 

English.  "  The  several  governments  of  the  English  colonies," 
writes  Colonel  Stoddard  at  this  time  (1747)  to  Governor  Shir- 
ley, had  for  three  years  been  persuading  the  Iroquois  "  into  a 
war  wherein  they  had  not  any  concern  but  to  serve  their  friends, 
and  they  have  left  their  hunting  and  other  means  of  living  and 
exposed  themselves  and  families  for  our  sakes,"  only  to  be  left 
in  the  lurch.  It  was  scarcely  better  for  the  colonial  soldiers,  in 
the  neglect  they  suffered  from  the  provincial  assemblies.  Stod- 
dard adds  :  Colonel  Johnson  and  his  friends  "  waste  their  sub- 
stance "  in  paying  for  the  equipments  of  their  warriors.  The 
Indians  did  not  fail  to  observe  this  selfishness  of  the  colonial 
legislatures.  Joshua  Gee  had  offered  some  very  good  advice 
when  he  said,  "  If  our  people  cannot  come  up  to  the  engaging 
ways  the  French  use  with  the  Indians,  at  least  good  manners 
should  be  shown  to  them." 

There  was,  in  some  respects,  a  surprising  sense  of  forgiveness 
in  the  Indian  for  all  such  slights,  and  the  English  knew  the 
soothing  efficacy  of  rum  and  strouds.  The  colonists  brought 
about  a  new  conference  at  Lancaster  in  July,  1748,  The  Twight- 
when  the  Twightwees  —  as  the  Miamis  were  called  by  Mk^^ 
the  English  —  committed  themselves  to  an  English  ^'^'^^• 
alliance  for  the  first  time.  This,  as  we  shall  see,  effectually 
established  the  English  traders  on  the  Wabash,  where  they  had 
had  a  precarious  traffic  since  1723. 

The  packmen  of  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia  now  pushed 
boldly  into  the  Ohio  valley.  Those  from  the  Quaker  ^he  Penn- 
province  had  some  advantage  over  their  rivals  in  a  route  to  the 
better  route,  for,  leaving  Philadelphia,  there  was  a  *'^'°- 
wagon  road  through  Lancaster  to  Harris's  Ferry  (Harrisburg) , 
and  a  bridle  path  thence  to  Will's  Creek  on  the  Potomac,  from 
which  the  path  was  continued  by  an  Indian  trail  to  the  forks  of 
the  Ohio  (Pittsburgh).  From  this  point  there  was  another  Indian 
path  to  the  Miamis'  towns.  On  the  west  branch  of  the  Susqvie- 
hanna,  from  a  point  known  as  the  Great  Island,  Indian  paths 
ran  also  in  different  directions,  and  one  crossed  the  mountains 
to  the  Alleghany.  A  late  writer  has  said  that,  at  many  places 
in  the  mountains,  these  beaten  tracks  can  still  be  seen. 

Note.  The  opposite  maps  on  the  succeeding  pages  are  parts  of  Lewis  Evans's  Middle  British 
Colonies  as  reissued  in  London  by  Jefferys  in  1758,  "  with  some  improvements  by  1.  Gibson."  It 
shows  the  traders'  routes  north  of  the  Oliio  and  the  position  of  the  Indian  settlements. 


jL  A  1^  E# 

T/ic-  C  onf e  derate  s  ./ornh 


246  THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

This  treaty  of  1748  was  a  substantial  triumph  for  the  Eug- 
The  Wabash  1^^^'  ^^  *^^^  westem  Confederacy  on  the  Wabash  had 
Indians.  been  playing  fast  and  loose  with  the  French  for  many 
years.  They  had  granted  land  to  them  for  the  Vincennes 
colony  in  1742,  and  the  Piankashaw  branch  of  the  Miamis,  who 
lived  near  that  post,  had  generally  kept  on  good  terms  with  the 
French.  The  feelings  of  this  tribal  section  of  the  confederacy 
were,  however,  an  exception  to  the  general  aversion  to  the  French, 
which  was  shared  by  the  Miamis  proper,  the  Eel  River  tribe, 
and  the  AVeas.  In  1744,  it  had  looked  as  if  the  French  had 
bound  the  whole  league  to  a  devastating  war  upon  the  English, 
upon  the  assurance  which  Beauharnois  had  given  them  that  the 
English  coidd  not  depend  on  the  assistance  of  the  Iroquois. 
When  this  project  failed,  it  had  seemed  to  Vaudreuil  at  New 
Orleans,  who  counted  on  the  Miamis'  country  for  a  large  part 
The  French  ^f  his  f  urs  and  suppHes,  that  it  was  essential  for  the 
on  the  Ohio,  french  to  build  a  fort  on  the  Wabash  fifteen  leagues 
from  its  mouth,  if  the  English  were  to  be  kept  away.  There 
was  some  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  best  site  for  such  a  stock- 
ade. To  some  it  seemed  as  if  a  point  on  the  Ohio  opposite  the 
Cherokee  (Tennessee)  River  was  the  better  place,  not  only  to 
thwart  an  English  advance,  but  to  hold  back  both  the  Chero- 
kees  and  Chickasaws,  and  preserve  the  navigation  of  the  ^lis- 
sissippi  to  the  French.  Others  looked  upon  the  neighborhood  of 
the  falls  of  the  Ohio  (Louisville),  as  being  the  more  suitable 
spot.  With  a  conviction  that  some  such  defense  must  be  under- 
taken, Vaudreuil  first  ^Tote  to  the  minister  of  the  marine,  No- 
vember 4,  1745,  and  often  later  during  a  year  and  more  he  was 
repeating  the  same  warnings.  He  thought  that  such  a  fort  for 
preserving  the  communications  of  Canada  with  the  Mississippi 
coidd  best  be  supplemented  by  a  pact  with  the  Shawnees,  which 
would  turn  that  tribe  against  the  English.  In  this  opinion 
The  Shaw-  ^^  was  Supported  l)y  the  advocacy  of  Beauharnois  on 
^^^^-  the  part  of  Canada,  who  urged  that  the   Shawnees 

should  not  only  be  alienated  from  the  English,  but  that  they 
should  be  domiciled  about  Detroit.  The  Shawnees,  at  this 
time,  or  some  part  of  them  at  least,  were  in  a  measure  inter- 
posed between  the  Senecas  and  Miamis,  and  they  had  tried 
to  draw  to  the  Ohio  the  lingering  Delawares  on  the  Susque- 
hanna.    Bellin's  map  (1744)  puts  their  main  vdlages  north  of 


THE  INDIAN   PATHS  IN   OHIO. 

[From  Andrews's  A'ew  Map  of  the  United  Stales,  London,  1783.] 


248  THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

the  Ohio  and  above  the  mouth  of  the  Kanawha.  Just  after 
this,  they  began  to  move  west  into  the  Scioto  country,  and  some 
of  them  pushed  as  far  as  the  valley  of  the  Wabash.  Here  they 
came  more  within  the  control  of  the  French,  and  could  be  better 
played  oif  against  the  English  influence,  which  by  this  time  was 
likely  to  be  increased  with  the  neighboring  Miamis. 

Adair  tells  us  that  a  Frenchman,  Shartel,  as  he  calls  him, 
was  the  agent  to  carry  the  Shawnees  finally  over  to  the  French, 
in  the  year  before  the  Lancaster  agreement  of  1748.  That 
chronicler  adds  that  this  negotiator  was  helped  in  the  matter 
by  "  the  supine  conduct  of  the  Pennsylvania  government." 

The  French  had  need  of  the  Shawnee  alliance.  In  1745, 
Sandusky  Euglisli  traders  were  at  Sandusky  Bay  erecting  houses 
Bay.  1745.  £q^.  ^i^gj^  goods,  j)erhaps  the  first  English  structures  in 
the  jjresent  State  of  Ohio.  Some  Hurons  had  wandered  thither 
the  year  before  (1744)  from  the  vicinity  of  Detroit,  and  were 
not  averse  to  receiving  the  flatteries  of  the  English.  Not  one 
of  them  was  more  disposed  to  the  English  than  Nicholas,  a 
chief  among  them. 

In  June,  1747,  some  French  who  happened  to  come  into  the 
neio'hborhood  were  killed.  When  the  commander  at  Detroit 
heard  of  it,  he  demanded  the  murderers,  and  insisted  that  the 
English  traders  should  be  driven  away.  It  was  the 
Nicholas.  opportunity  of  Nicholas.  He  had  of  late  been  urging 
upon  his  neighbors,  the  Ottawas,  to  unite  in  a  plot  of 
his  people,  in  which  the  Miamis  should  join,  in  order  to  attack 
Detroit  and  pillage  its  storehouses.  The  conspiracy  grew,  and 
all  but  the  Illinois  tribes  were  finally  brought  to  promise  assist- 
ance, when  a  squaw,  overhearing  the  councils,  revealed  the 
scheme  to  a  priest,  and  Longueil  heard  of  it  in  the  summer 
of  1747.  The  Hurons  cabined  about  Detroit  fled,  and  the  plot 
lost  impetus.  There  was  a  murder  here  and  there,  and  Nicho- 
las seized  Fort  Miami  at  the  confluence  of  the  St.  Joseph  and 
St.  Mary  rivers.  The  pact  was  loosened,  and  the  seventeen 
tribes  which  had  conspired  together  began  to  fall  off.  By  Sep- 
tember (1747),  reinforcements  had  reached  Detroit  from  Mon- 
treal, and  Nicholas  lost  heart.  During  the  winter,  the  French 
rebuilt  (February,  1748)  the  fort  on  the  Miami,  and  ordered 
the  English  out  of  the  valley.  Shortly  after,  Nicholas  disap- 
peared from    Sandusky,  and  Conrad  Weiser  later   learned  at 


GEORGE   CROGHAN.  249 

Logstown  that  a  hundred  fighting  Hurons  (Wyandots)  were 
coming  to  put  themselves  under  English  protection.  By  June, 
the  members  of  the  league  were  nearly  all  restored  to  the  favor 
of  the  French.  But  the  danger  was  not  passed.  In  October 
(1748),  the  commandant  at  Detroit  was  again  counseled  to  be 
wary  and  prevent  the  English  getting  a  lodgment  in  the  Ohio 
country.  He  was  told  to  exert  force  if  need  be,  though  peace 
ostensibly  existed. 

This  hostile  combination  having  failed,    the    Miarais  alone 
threw  themselves  into  the  English  interest,  and  the  rj,,,g 
treaty   of  Lancaster  (July,   1745),  as   already  men-  ^^"^'s- 
tioned,  was  brought  about.     The  subsequent  active  disaffection 
of  the  Miamis,  and  the  new  intrusion  of  the  English  packmen, 
was  the  subject  of  Sieur  Raymond's  reports  the  following  year 
(1749).      The   Pennsylvania    and  Virginia   people  were    now 
founding  their  most  advanced  post  (1748)  at  Picka-  pickawii- 
willany  on  the  Big  Miami,  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  ^^^^'  ^^^^' 
up  the  stream  from  the  Ohio.     It  was  estimated  at  this  time 
that  during  a  single  season  some  three  hundred  English  traders 
were  leading  their  pack-horses  and  dragging  their  bateaux  over 
the  mountain  passes  into  the  Ohio  valley. 

No  man  was  so  conspicuous  among  them  as  George  Croghan. 
He  was  an  Irishman,  who  had  been  for  several  years  George 
trading  along  the  shores  of  Lake   Erie,  learning  the  ^'■°s'^*°- 
Indian  tongue  and  becoming  acquainted  with  the  geography  of 
the  region.    The  southern  shore  of  Lake  Erie  was  the 
last  of  any  of  the  borders  of  the  Great  Lakes  to  come  siwreof 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  map-makers.      Bellin,   who 
made  Charlevoix's  maps,  knew  nothing  of  it,  nor  was  it  compre- 
hended by  Celoron,  whose  expedition  we  shall  soon  follow. 

When  Conrad  Weiser  recommended  the  Pennsylvania  gov- 
ernment to  employ  Croghan  as  an  official  almoner  to  the  tribes 
of  this  lake-shore  region,  he  was  the  best  available  man  to  coun- 
teract the  French  slyness  in  "speaking  underground."  An 
honest  man,  as  Weiser  termed  him,  Croghan  recognized  certain 
tricks  in  the  French  methods  of  trade,  which  he  felt  the  Eng- 
lish might  well  learn  to  copy.  He  held  the  opinion  that  in  this 
as  in  other  intercourse  with  the  savages,  the  French,  better  than 
the  English,  knew  how  to  manage  their  peculiarities.  Equally 
conspicuous  with  Croghan,  if  indeed  not  more  so,  from  his  con- 


250  THE  PORTALS   OF   THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

stant  employment  as  a  public  interpreter,  was  Croghan's  spon- 
conrad  ^°^''  Weiser  himseK.  The  government  of  Pennsyl- 
weiser.  yania  in  particular  largely  depended  on  him  to  gather 
tidings  of  what  was  going  on  among  the  Indians  ;  and  his  cor- 
respondence with  Peters,  the  secretary  of  that  province,  shows 
how  vigilant  in  this  respect  he  was.  No  one  knew  better  than 
he  how  the  Six  Nations  held  the  balance  of  power,  not  only 
among  the  savages  farther  west,  who  waited  their  motions,  but 
also  in  the  counter  movements  of  the  French  and  English. 
When  New  York  began  to  convert  its  temporary  structure  at 
Oswego  into  a  stone  fort,  it  was  the  French  distrust 
as  of  the  Iroquois  which  restrained  the  Canadians  from 

attacking  it.  When  the  English  sought  to  occupy 
Irondequoit  Bay,  it  was  an  intimation  from  the  confederates 
that  Oswego  and  Niagara  were  near  enough  together  for  rivals, 
that  made  the  New  Yorkers  desist.  These  mutual  distrusts 
were  no  doubt  complicated  by  the  clandestine  trade  between 
Albany  and  the  St.  Lawrence,  which  neither  j)arty  wished  to 
put  to  a  hazard.  Peter  Kalm,  who  had  some  experience  with 
these  sly  hucksters  on  the  Hudson,  felt  they  were  sharp  enough 
The  Albany  ^^  vxAw  a  Jcw  ;  and  John  Reinhold  Forster,  his  Eng- 
traders.  Y\^\\  editor,  would  soften  the  charge  by  thinking  it 
arose  from  the  ancient  sj^mpathy  of  the  Swedes  for  the  French. 
Despite  this  mutual  wariness,  Beauharnois  succeeded  in  draw- 
ing the  confederates  to  a  conference  in  the  summer  of  1745 ; 
but  it  did  not  prevent  retaliatory  raids,  stirred  up  by  Piquet 
on  one  side,  and  conducted  by  the  Mohawks  on  the  other. 

But  the  struggle  was  soon  to  be  transferred  to  the  Ohio. 
The  Ohio  The  English  made  the  first  movement  in  1748  south 
country.  q£  ^j^^^  rivcr ;  the  French  followed  the  next  year 
north  of  it. 

The  projection  of  the  Ohio  Company  in  1748  was  in  the  in- 
terests of  Virginia,  whose  traders  hoped  by  the  facili- 
company.  tics  of  watcr  Carriage  between  the  Potomac  and  east- 
ern branches  of  the  Ohio  to  attain  an  advantage  over 
the  Pennsylvanians.  The  movement  was  supported  by  the 
leaders  of  the  tidewater  gentry,  and  an  application  for  a  grant 
of  five  hundred  thousand  acres  south  of  the  Ohio,  and  between 
the  Monongahela  and  the  Kanawha,  was  made  by  their  London 
agent,  John  Hanbury.    His  petition  was  supported  by  the  Board 


THOMAS   CRESAP.  251 

of  Trade  on  the  ground  that  such  a  grant  would  consolidate 
trade  for  the  English,  and  give  them  advantages  over  the  French, 
—  arguments  that  prevailed  with  them  at  this  period ,  but  were 
not  much  thought  of  when,  twenty  years  later,  these  western 
settlements  might,  in  the  board's  judgment,  prove  to  be  inde- 
pendent of  the  manufactures  of  the  mother  country. 

On  May  19,  1749,  a  royal  order  awarded  two  hundred  thou- 
sand acres  of  those  asked  for,  with  a  ten  years'  freedom  from 
rent,  on  condition  that  a  hundred  families  were  settled  upon 
them  within  seven  years,  and  a  fort  built  and  maintained.  This 
complied  with,  the  full  grant  of  half  a  million  acres  would  be 
made.  Accordingly,  the  orders  were  delivered  to  Governor 
Nelson  on  July  12,  1749. 

Some  years  before  this,  in  1742-43,  a  vagrant  Yorkshireman, 
Colonel  Thomas  Cresap,  then  near  forty  years  old,  had  xhomas 
built  "  a  hunting  and  trading  cabin  "  near  the  upper-  *^''^^'^p- 
most  fork  of  the  Potomac,  —  the  earliest  permanent  settler  in 
western  Maryland.  His  abode  was  near  an  old  Shawnee  town, 
and  its  position  is  shown  in  Mitchell's  map  (1755).  Previous 
to  this  he  had  lived  on  the  Pennsylvania  side  of  the  line,  and 
Evans  in  his  map  indicates  the  spot.  Cresap  was  a  man  not 
imsuited  to  the  rough  and  boisterous  phases  of  a  frontier  life, 
and  had  joined  in  the  somewhat  hazardous  border  difficulties 
between  these  provinces  so  conspicuously  that  he  had  become 
well  known,  and  was  turned  to  in  any  troublesome  venture. 
He  was  therefore  just  the  man  for  the  company  to  employ  to 
open  a  way  to  their  new  domain,  and  it  was  through  his  rude 
surveying  efforts  that  a  track  was  run  across  the  divide  and 
into  the  company's  grant,  pretty  much  in  the  same  direction 
as  later  developed  in  Braddock's  road. 

The  company  had  relied  in  part  upon  the  Pennsylvania 
Germans  to  make  up  the  quota  of  a  hundred  families.  The 
proprietors,  however,  held  to  their  ancient  ways,  and  fastened 
Episcopal  tithes  upon  the  soil.  The  Germans  loathed  such  a 
vassalage  and  held  back.  It  seemed  then,  for  the  present  at 
least,  that  the  scheme  was  to  fail.  It  had  certainly  ^he  French 
gone  far  enough  to  arouse  the  French,  who  saw  in  it  owo*^^ 
a  new  assertion  of  the  old  doctrine  of  the  sea-to-sea  <^°™pa°y- 
charters,  and  Dumas  in  a  Ilemoire  expressed  the  government's 
anxiety :    "  Every  man   of    sense  who  is  conversant  with   the 


252  THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

manner  in  which  war  can  be  carried  on  in  that  country  will 
ao-ree  with  me  that  all  the  resources  of  the  state  will  never  pre- 
serve Canada,  if  the  English  are  once  settled  at  the  heads  of 
these  western  rivers." 

No  one  saw  this  better  than  Galissonniere,  and  he  determined 
on  a  movement  to  the  Ohio.     His  purpose  was  soon 
nierrand       divined  at  Albany,  and  Johnson  sent  messengers  to 
expemtion.      the  tribcs  along  that  river  warning  them  of  a  French 
^^^^'  inroad.     Clinton,  in  June,  1749,  sent  word  to  the  gov- 

ernor of  Pennsylvania  that  some  New  Englanders,  coming  from 
Canada,  reported  a  force  of  a  thousand  men  preparing  to  go  to 
the  Ohio.  Croghan  was  at  once  instructed  to  send  out  scouts 
to  discover  the  truth.  The  fact  was  that  on  June  15,  1749, 
Bienville  de  Celoron  had  left  Montreal,  under  instructions 
from  Galissonniere,  to  traverse  the  Ohio  region,  take  formal 
possession  at  points,  discover  the  temper  of  the  natives,  and 
drive  off  the  English  traders.  Jbncaire,  the  son  of 
a  French  officer  by  a  Seneca  mother,  who  was  to  the 
French  what  William  Johnson  was  to  the  English,  —  the  best 
man  they  had  to  guide  the  Indian  will,  —  was  put  in  the  van.  As 
one  of  the  incised  plates,  recording  the  French  occupation,  and 
intended  for  burial  along  the  route,  fell  into  Johnson's  hands, 
he  was  possessed  very  soon  of  the  object  of  the  expedition  ;  and 
it  has  been  surmised,  and  was  believed  by  Johnson,  that  this 
plate  was  stolen  from  Joncaire  while  among  the  Senecas. 

Celoron  did  not  have  anything  like  the  force  which  the  New 
c«oron's  England  men  had  reported,  for  beside  his  officers  he 
route.  j^g^^  Qjjiy  twenty  French  soldiers,  a  hundred  and  more 

voyageurs,  and  thirty  Indians,  Iroquois  and  Abenakis.  The 
party  turned  in  from  Lake  Erie  at  the  portage  which  rises  a 
thousand  feet  in  eight  miles  to  Lake  Chautauqua.  This  was 
the  most  difficult  of  all  the  Erie  portages,  and  was  found  so 
wearisome  that  it  was  usually  neglected  for  that  of  Presqu'  Isle, 
by  the  modern  city  of  Erie.  At  the  end  of  July,  the  expedition 
was  fairly  embarked  on  the  Alleghany,  and  passed  down  the 
Ohio.  What  Celoron  in  his  itinerary  calls  "  the  finest  place  on 
the  river  "  was  a  Delaware  village,  probably  at  the  forks  of  the 
Ohio,  where  the  historic  Fort  Duquesne  later  stood.  At  Logs- 
town,  somewhat  farther  down  the  main  stream,  Celoron  had  an 
interview  with  the  Indians,  and  told  them  that  they  might  make 


CELORON.  253 

the  most  of  this  year's  hunting-,  in  order  to  pay  their  English 
debts,  for  it  was  the  last  year  the  English  would  be  allowed  on 
the  river,  —  a  speech  received  with  contempt  according  to  the 
English  report. 

The  French  commander  says  he  was  struck  with   the  way  in 

U  H  r  b  b  ^  h. 
H  >d  >   n  trl  >)d  > 

"     o  ^  ^  ^  — 

^  y  •>  "z  ^  r^  ^      •T''^  r*  ij  >  Z  M  t^  M 


2  H        n  pj  0  jj  ^  ~'5  ^  H  w  o  2  ii  ^ 
"S2:o^>yWnOrtt^  3-Hr, 


^  .    05       —  p]  ^  r,-  2  r  v^  >  ^  >  f^  tn  H  H 
—•ri  5d  HO  H  ^  E^  <  -^  5  2  < 

^  <^  S  tt         H]         rrt  pi 


which  the    savages  were    mixed  in   their  villages,  —  Iroquois, 
Shawnees,  Loups,  Delawares,  Miamis  being  often   domiciled 
together ;   and  all,  as  he  was  troubled  to  find,  much  English 
more  inclined  to  the  English  than  to  his  own  people.   *'^'^®''^- 
He  found  traces  of  English  packmen  everywhere.      Some  of 
them  had  entered  the  valley,  as  he  found,  by  the  Kanawha, 


254  THE  PORTALS    OF   THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

which  was  mainly  the  route  for  the  Carolina  traders.  He 
makes  the  usual  observation  that  the  cheapness  of  the  English 
goods  made  the  greater  attraction  of  their  traffickers,  and  he 
intimates  a  belief  that  they  purposely  sold  at  a  loss,  in  order 
to  gain  the  Indians'  allegiance,  while  the  English  government 
made  good  the  deficiency. 

Here  and  there,  generally  at  river  mouths,  Celoron  buried  his 
His  buried  inciscd  platcs.  Their  inscriptions  were  much  the 
plates.  same  :  "  We  have   placed  this  plate  here  as  a  memo- 

rial of  the  establishment  of  our  power  in  the  territory  which 
is  claimed  by  us  on  the  river  Ohio  and  throughout  its  tribu- 
taries to  their  sources,  and  confirmed  to  us  by  the  treaties  of 
Kyswick,  Utrecht,  and  Aix-la-Chapelle."  One  or  two  of  these 
plates  have  since  been  unearthed.  That  which  was  buried  near 
the  mouth  of  the  Muskingum  was  found  by  some  boys  in  the 
early  years  of  this  century.  It  was  protruding  from  a  bank 
which  had  been  washed  by  the  current.  The  youngsters  melted 
a  part  of  it  to  make  bullets,  and  the  remaining  fragment  is  now 
preserved  in  the  collection  of  the  American  Antiquarian  Soci- 
ety at  Worcester,  Massachusetts.  Another  was  discovered  near 
the  mouth  of  the  Kanawha  in  1846. 

In  August,  as  Celoron  tells  us,  the  party  met  a  band  of  six 
English,  who  had  fifty  horses  and  one  hundred  and 
traders  fifty  balcs  of  fur.  They  were  returning  from  a  suc- 
cessful trafficking  tour,  and  were  bound  for  Philadel- 
])hia.  The  French  leader  warned  them,  in  writing,  to  withdraw 
from  the  valley  and  not  to  return.  They  replied,  either  "  through 
fear  or  otherwise,"  that  they  would  not  come  back.  He  sent 
by  them,  writing  the  letter  among  the  Shawnees,  August  16, 
a  message  to  Governor  Harrison,  asking  him  to  prohibit  such 
trespasses  in  the  future,  as  the  French  would  be  compelled  to 
expel  them  by  force  if  necessary,  should  they  encounter  them. 
He  had  soon  an  occasion  to  dispatch  a  like  missive  to  the  gov- 
ernor of  Carolina  by  some  traders  from  that  province. 

Burying  his  last  plate  at  the  mouth  of  the  Great  Miami  (Ri- 
viere a  la  Roche),  Celoron  turned  up  that  stream  at  the  end  of 
August.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  he  found  that  the  Indians  kept 
aloof,  and  the  Miamis  even  rejected  his  offer  of  powder  and  ball. 
There  were  English  traders  close  by,  but  being  wai-ned,  they 
kej)t  out  of  sight.     By  September  20  the  French  had  ascended 


C EL  OR  ON.  255 

the  river  so  far  that  there  was  no  longer  sufficient  water  for 
the  canoes.  They  accordingly  burned  them,  with  all  else  that 
was  too  burdensome  for  a  land  journey,  and,  procuring  horses 
from  the  Indians,  struck  across  the  country  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  miles  to  the  Maumee,  reaching  it  on  September  25. 
Here  Celoron  found  a  French  fort,  with  a  small  garrison  com- 
manded by  Raymond. 

Fortunately  we  are  aided  all  along  Celoron's  route  by  docu- 
ments, pointing  out  landmarks.  The  leader's  journal  c^ioron's 
is  preserved  in  the  Archives  of  the  Marine  at  Paris,  ^^^^^'^^l  """^ 
and  has  been  printed  by  Margry.  It  was  first  brought  «''''"p«'«>"=ip- 
to  the  notice  of  American  students  in  an  essay,  with  an  ab- 
stract, by  the  late  O.  H.  Marshall  of  Buffalo,  and  is  now  in- 
cluded in  his  Historical  Writings.  A  fuller  translation  has 
been  printed  in  the  Catholic  Historical  Researches,,  1885-86. 
Father  Bonnecamps,  a  Jesuit,  was  a  professor  of  mathematics 
and  hydrography  at  the  College  of  Quebec,  and  accompanied  the 
expedition.  He  made  a  map  and  kept  a  journal,  also  preserved 
in  the  Marine,  and  first  brought  to  our  attention  by  Marshall. 
These  three  documents  make  an  all-sufficient  account  of  what 
was  done. 

The  remainder  of  Celoron's  journey  has  little  to  interest  us. 
He  kept  in  the  van  with  his  Frenchmen,  and  reached  Detroit 
on  October  6,  and  there  waited  for  his  Indians  to  come  up. 
On  November  9,  he  was  again  in  Montreal,  having  lost  on 
the  way  but  a  single  man,  who  was  drowned. 

Hendrick  the  Mohawk  soon  learned  from  the  St.  Lawrence 
settlements  enough  to  make  him  believe  that  the  ex- 
pedition was  looked   upon   as   a   failure,   and  so  he  tionafaii- 
reported  to  Colonel  Johnson.      Celoron  himself  does 
not  disguise  his  disappointment :  "  All  I  need  say  is  that  these 
Indian  nations  are  not  kindly  disposed  to  the  French,  and  are 
wholly  friends  of  the  English,"  and  he  believed  the  secret  of 
it  lay  in  their  better  inducements  for  trade.     He  had  seen  it 
conspicuously  on  the  Big  Miami  at  the  mouth  of  Loraine  Creek, 
where  the  new  English  post  of  Pickawillany  stood.     It    was 
much  the  same  everywhere,  as  he  believed,  along  the  twelve 
hundred  leagues  of    his  travel,  —  much  the  same  among  the 
Delawares  on  the   Muskingum,  among  the    Shawnees    on  the 
Scioto,  and  among  the  Wyandots  on  the  Sandusky. 


256 


THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 


The  news  of  the  failure  spread  rapidly  among  the  English, 
and  in  October  Governor  Harrison  was  assured  of  it  by  ru- 
mors from  over  the  mountains,  and  commu- 
nicated them  to  Clinton  of  New  York.  Scouts 
which  the  Pennsylvania  governor  sent  along 
the  Frenchman's  track  made  the  same  report. 
Galissonniere,  who  had  hoped  so  much  from 

the  undertaking,  was  no  longer  in 
nierere-  Qucbcc  to  fccl  the  discouragemcut. 
tembe'r/      He    had   bccu    summoned    home   to 

take  part  in  the  diplomatic  confer- 
ences, and  left  Quebec  in  September,  1749. 
He  had  felt  from  the  first  that  there  was  little 
chance  of  averting  a  protracted  war  with  the 
English.  It  had,  indeed,  only  been  delayed 
by  the  peace  of  1748,  as  already  signified 
in  the  preceding  chapter.     He  was  succeeded 

by  Admiral  Jonquiere,  who  had  had 

Jonquiere  . ,  -,  .  .  i  • 

succeeds.  rather  rough  experiences  m  reaching 
his  post.  He  had  been  in  D'An- 
ville's  fleet,  which  the  storms  had  scattered  so 
fortunately  for  the  Bostonians.  He  was  again 
at  sea  bound  for  Quebec  in  1747,  when  he 
was  captured  by  the  English.  Liberated 
by  the  peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  he  had  at  last 
succeeded,  in  August,  1749,  in  reaching  his 
government,  and  it  was  to  him  that  Celoron 
now  made  his  report. 


But  while  English  influence  was  found  by 
Celoron  to  be  everywhere  active  along  the 
Ohio,  there  was  one  of  the  approaches  to  the 
Ohio  valley  where  English  pioneers  were  pro- 
vokins:  discontent.  This  was  in  the 
valley  of  the  Juniata,  which  the  Iro- 
quois had  reserved  as  a  hunting- 
ground  for  their  dependents.  The  Senecas 
objected  to  the  squatters,  who  were  marking 
their  "tomahawk  claims"  well  up  the  valley  and  even  over 
the  passes.     "  The  Indians,"  wrote  Conrad  Weiser,  who  never 


The 

Juniata 

valley. 


CfiLORON'S  MARCH. 

[Taken  from  King's  Ohio.'] 


258  THE  PORTALS   OF  THE   OHIO    VALLEY. 

failed  in  honest  convictions  as  to  tlie  Indian  rights,  "  are  very 
uneasy  about  the  white  people  settling  beyond  the  Endless 
Mountains  on  the  Juniata,  on  Sherman's  Creek,  etc.  They  tell 
me  that  above  thirty  families  are  settled  upon  Indian  lands  this 
spring"  (1749). 

The  Moravians  under  Zinzendorf,  who  had  left  Georgia  on 
the  breaking  out  of  the  Spanish  war,  had  come  into 
Pennsylvania  some  years  before  this,  and  set  up  their 
tabernacle  at  Bethlehem.  Thence  they  were  sending  their  mis- 
sionaries towards  the  Wyoming  country,  —  the  first  whites  seen 
in  that  region,  —  and  feeling  their  way  even  over  the  mountains, 
nearer  the  New  York  line. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

LOUISIANA  AND   ITS   INDIANS. 

1743-1757. 

It  was  in  1743  that  Bienville,  now  a  man  of  sixty-two,  wearied 
with  buffeting  events  and  enemies,  and  not  well  satis-  BienviUe 
fied  with  all  that  fortune  had  bestowed  upon  him,  byTaif-**^ 
resigned  his  command  in  Louisiana.     In  May,  he  was  '^''^"''-  ^'^'^■ 
succeeded  by  the  Marquis  de  Vaudreuil.     The  province  then 
contained,  it  was  reckoned,  about  six  thousand  inhabitants  not 
of   native   stock,  —  two  thirds  of  these   were  French,  the  rest 
mainly  negroes.     There  was  some  political  corruption  in  the 
government,  and  New  Orleans  was  far  from  having  ^^^ 
become  the  place  which  Bienville  had  figured  in  his  0''^^*°«- 
dreams.     Still,  there  was  a  growing  air  of  briskness  about  it, 
and  its  commerce  outward  to  Europe  and  the  West  Indies,  and 
within  toward  the  Indian  country  and  up  the  river,  was  begin- 
ning to  be  considerable.     The  territory  immediately  dependent 
on  the  lower  Mississippi  hardly  afforded  as  yet  adequate  sup- 
plies of  food,  and  Vaudreuil  notified  his  home  government,  in 
1744,  that  if  an  importation  of  flour  had  not  arrived,  he  could 
not  have  controlled  his  famished  garrison.     The  fact  was  that, 
for  a  while,  Louisiana  existed  only  because  the  Illinois   country 
coidd  send  down  the  necessary  food. 

There  were  at  this  time  two  thousand,  possibly  nearer  three 
thousand,  whites  in  the  Illinois  settlements  of  Kaskas-  ^he  iiunois 
kia,  St.  Philippe,  Cahokia,  and  Prairie  du  Rocher.  Life  ^°^°^y- 
in  these  communities  was  certainly  picturesque,  and  the  poetic 
temperament  might  consider  it  Arcadian.  It  was  to  a  certain 
extent  contented,  for  ignorance  and  self-indulgence  are  not  wholly 
hostile  to  a  life  of  complacency.  They  got  a  sufficient  support 
from  the  soil,  and  cared  very  little  for  the  mines  which  had 


260  LOUISIANA   AND  ITS  INDIANS. 

earlier  attracted  attention.  We  see  in  their  church  registers 
how  they  were  baptized  and  married,  and  the  Jesuit  mission 
gave  them  something  to  which  they  coidd  cling.  They  had,  to 
share  their  labor,  a  number  of  horses  secured  from  a  Spanish 
stock  which  had  been  passed  beyond  New  Mexico  from  tribe  to 
tribe.  Traders  came  and  went  among  them,  and  gave  their 
women  the  opportunity  to  buy  the  gewgaws  which  both  pleased 
them  and  doubtless  lightened  the  burdens  of  life.  The  men 
built  barges.  Filled  with  flour  and  pork,  one  could  see,  in  the 
proper  season,  no  inconsiderable  flotillas  push  out  into  the 
stream,  perhaps  uniting  from  the  different  settlements  in  one 
compact  body.  They  carried  life  and  merriment  as 
with  New  they  started  down  to  New  Orleans.  Such  a  combin- 
ing of  boats  was  far  more  necessary  than  mere  com- 
panionship required,  for  they  sometimes  encountered  predatory 
bands  of  savages  along  the  lower  country.  Starting  in  Decem- 
ber, as  was  usual,  their  lading  was  disposed  of  by  February. 
The  adventurers  then  filled  their  bateaux  with  cotton,  rice, 
sugar,  and  tobacco,  and  entered  upon  the  tedious  ascent. 
Carrying  ropes  ahead  to  be  tied  to  trees  on  the  bank,  and 
pulling  their  boats  against  the  current  by  relay  after  relay, 
and  sometimes  poling  in  the  shallows,  they  made  the  wearisome 
homeward  voyage. 

Vaudreuil,  at  New  Orleans,  had  begun  with  somewhat  lordly 
The  social  social  aiuis.  He  wished  the  official  circle  which  sur- 
we  of°New^^  rouudcd  liiui  to  have  some  of  the  splendors  and  pleas- 
orieans.  ^^.gg  ^-f  ^  little  court.  He  did  not  see  as  weU  as  others 
saw  the  rather  incongruous  exhibition  which  the  manners  of 
Paris  made  in  the  swampy  little  town.  The  commerce  of  the 
place  enlivened  the  humble  life,  and  an  occasional  arrival  of 
"casket  girls"  stirred  the  domestic  passions.  With  it  all, 
Vaudreuil  had  his  share  of  anxieties.  There  was  always  the 
fear  of  the  interruption  of  his  supplies  from  the  up-country ;  if 
not  by  Indian  interference,  it  might  come  from  the  inevitable, 
ubiquitous  English.  To  maintain  his  communications  with 
Canada  by  the  portages  of  the  St.  Lawrence  valley  was  an  in- 
cessant solicitude.     At  one  time,  while  Berthelot  was  command- 

NoTE.     The  opposite  map  is  from  Tfie  Middle  Stales,  by  James  Russell,  which  appeared  in  Win- 
terbotham's  America,  and  shows  the  portages. 


262 


LOUISIANA   AND  ITS  INDIANS. 


ing  on  the  Illinois, 
that  officer  was 
wholly  cut  off  from 
tidings  from  New 
Orleans.  Ignorant 
of  political  condi- 
tions and  reduced 
in  stores,  Berthelot 
had  been  forced  to 
draw  in  his  little 
force  and  concen- 
trate it  at  Kaskas- 
kia. 

The  Indian  na- 
Native  tives  through- 
tribes.  Q^^  ^jj^g  prov- 
ince were  a  con- 
stant perplexity. 
The  tribes  of  the 
Illinois,  which,  at 
the  time  of  the 
treaty  of  Utrecht, 
had  been  steadfastly 
French  in  sympathy 
and  a  foil  to  the 
Foxes,  always 

Foxes,       ,        „  „     , 

Sioux,    the  toe  oi  the 

Sauks.  Til 

French,  had 
of  late  years  been 
moving  south  and 
east.  They  were 
even  opening  trade 
with  the  English, 
and  welcoming  the 
Carolinian  packmen 
coming  by  the  Cher- 
okee Kiver.  This 
rendered  the  upper 

Note.  The  annexed  map  is 
from  James  Adair's  History  of 
the  American  Indians,  Lou- 
don, 1775,  showing  the  posi- 
tions of  the  tribos. 


264  LOUISIANA   AND  ITS  INDIANS. 

communications  by  the  river  all  the  more  insecure,  and  threat- 
ened the  access  to  Detroit. 

Farther  north  there  was  still  danger  from  the  Sioux.  They 
had  forced  the  evacuation  of  the  fort  on  Lake  Pepin.  They 
were  constantly  threatening  to  make  concerted  action  with  the 
Foxes.  This  ferocious  little  band  always  stood  ready  to  join 
the  Sioux  if  forced  to  flee  their  country.  They  were  equally 
ready  to  give  themselves  over  to  the  Iroquois.  Since  they  had 
dwindled  so  much  in  numbers,  what  was  left  of  them  maintained 
a  rather  fitful  amalgamation  with  the  Sauks.  In  1746,  their 
levying  of  toll  upon  the  traders  who  took  the  portage  from 
Green  Bay  became  so  onerous  a  tax  upon  this  body  that  the 
traders  united  under  a  leader  named  Morand  and  attacked  the 
Foxes.  Their  onset  was  so  furious  that  the  Indians  abandoned 
the  country  and  settled  on  the  Wisconsin,  about  twenty  miles 
from  its  mouth,  only  to  be  further  attacked  and  pursued.  The 
fear  after  this  that  they  woidd  make  common  cause  with  the 
Sioux  was  a  source  of  continvial  anxiety  to  the  French. 

These  proceedings  had  done  something  to  make  Green  Bay 
attractive  for  settlers,  and  the  Langlades,  who  were  at 

The  Lang-  ,  .  .  ■,  ,.  (.    -ttt.  •  •■> 

lades  at         this  poiut  the   earlicst  occupants  oi    Vv  isconsin  sou, 

soon  gathered  a  little  colony  about  them.  The  father, 
Augustine,  had  come  there  from  Mackinac,  where  he  had  been 
a  trader,  and  his  son  Charles,  now  a  youth  of  twenty-two,  more 
than  half  Indian  in  spirit,  and  quite  half  in  blood,  was  preparing 
for  a  career  which  made  him  conspicuous  in  the  great  struggle 
at  a  later  day. 

Even  on  Lake  Superior  the  insidious  English  had  inspirited 

the  Chippeways  (O  jib  ways)  against  the  French,  and 
on  Lake  ^^^    tlius  from  bcyoud  the  remotest  portage  of  the  Great 
upenor.       Yj^^gy  there  came  reports  to  disquiet  the  governor  in 
his  southern  capital. 

The  most  perplexing  rumors  were  from  south  of  the  Ohio, 

where  the  Choctaws  and  Chickasaws  were  diligently 
chickasaws,    played  off   again st  each  other  by  the    rival  whites. 

Adair  tells  us  that  the  French  at  Tumbikpe  (Tombig- 
bee)  were  the  instigators  of  the  Choctaw  irruptions.  This  tribe 
made  the  most  extortionate  demands  for  gifts  as  the  price  of 
immunity  from  their  hostility.  The  same  writer  says  the  French 
were  penurious  as  compared  with  the  English  in  bestowing  such 


THE   CHOCTAWS. 


265 


gratuities.  The  English  were  at  intervals  successful  in  sowing 
dissensions  among  the  Chootaws,  and  then  it  would  happen  that 
for  a  while  some  portions  of  that  tribe  would  espouse  the  Eng- 
lish interests,  and  even  make  hostile  demonstration  against 
those  who  adhered  to  the  French.  This  at  one  period  went  so 
far  that  there  was  apprehension  at  New  Orleans  that  an  Angio- 
Choctaw  invasion  was  in  store  for  them. 


DUMONT'S  MAP  OF  THE  CmCKASAW  AND   CHOCTAW   COUNTRY. 


266  LOUISIANA   AND  ITS  INDIANS. 

Adair  had  opened  trade  with  the  Chickasaw  s  in  1744,  and  at 
this  time  he  encountered  French  emissaries  seeking  to  arouse 
them  against  the  English,  on  the  plea  that  the  Carolinians  would 
overrun  their  country  in  their  progress  toward  the  Mississippi. 

The  Chickasaws  and  Creeks  were  usually  proof  against  French 
persuasions,  and  we  find  them  making  raids  upon  the  French 
villages  wherever  exposed  beyond  support.  In  retaliation,  such 
Indians  as  the  French  could  control  were  sent  to  storm  the 
traders'  houses  among  those  tribes  and  make  off  with  the  plun- 
der. Adair  speaks  of  conducting  a  party  of  Chickasaws  to 
Charleston,  on  one  occasion,  to  keep  alive  their  sympathy  for 
the  English. 

The  French  never  succeeded  in  getting  a  successful  hold  upon 
Cherokees  ^^^  Chcrokccs,  much  Icss  upon  the  Catawbas,  who  were 
Catawbas.  ^^q^q  completely  within  the  influence  of  the  Carolini- 
ans and  Virginians.  A  clearly  defined  trading-path  ran  south 
from  Petersburg  in  Virginia  and,  crossing  the  Roanoke,  extended 
well  into  the  circle  of  Cherokee  and  Catawba  villages.  After 
Fort  Augusta  was  built  in  1740,  the  Cherokees  began  to  mark 
out  bridle  paths  toward  it  from  their  villages,  and  the  trade  in 
deerskins  flourished. 

The  Catawbas,  more  than  the  Cherokees,  were  a  constant 
source  of  uneasiness  to  the  English,  not  from  any  fear  of  French 
intrigue,  but  from  the  inveterate  enmity  of  this  tribe  for  the 
northern  allies  of  the  English,  the  equally  irrepressible  Iroquois. 
Conrad  Weiser,  who  could  compare  the  singularly  well-balanced 
checks  of  the  New  York  confederates  in  their  tribal  councils, 
speaks  of  the  Catawbas  as  "  an  irregidar  people,  with  no  coun- 
cil, —  the  richest  and  greatest  among  them  calling  himself 
king."  The  English  endeavors  to  bring  these  allies,  north  and 
south,  into  friendly  union  and  to  calm  their  mutual  passions 
were  met  by  accusation,  the  one  upon  the  other.     The 

Hostilities  .  »     -fr-       •     •        i  r 

with  the  valley  ot  Virginia,  long  atter  a  certain  permanence 
was  secured  for  its  settlements,  was  disturbed  by  the 
passing  of  their  warring  parties,  bent  on  mischief.  Washing- 
ton, when  he  was  surveying  for  Lord  Fairfax  along  the  lower 
parts  of  the  Shenandoah,  tells  us  that  he  sometimes  encountered 
these  devastating  hordes. 

Note.     The  map  on  the  opposite  page  is  from  Sayer  and  Jefferys'  reproduction  of  Danville's 
North  America  (London),  sliowing  the  positions  of  the  southern  Indians. 


268  LOUISIANA   AND  ITS  INDIANS. 

By  the  middle  of  the  century  (1750)  the  French  in  Louisi- 
DiBtricts  of  ^^^  Were  well  intrenched  outside  New  Orleans,  in  at 
Louisiana,  j^^^g^  eight  districts.  Not  far  from  the  capital  they 
had  a  post  and  settlement  at  Point  Coupee  on  the  Mississijjpi, 
below  the  Red  River.  They  maintained  a  post  at  Natchi- 
toches toward  the  Spanish  frontier  in  New  Mexico.  They  had 
another  at  Natchez,  and  still  another  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Arkansas.  There  were  also  settlements  dependent  on  Fort 
Illinois  Chartres  in  the  Illinois  country,  the  best  compacted 
country.  ^^  ^^l  the  occupied  regions,  numbering  at  this  time,  as 
was  computed,  eleven  hundred  whites,  three  hundred  negroes, 
and  about  sixty  Indian  bondmen.  This  estimate  did  not  in- 
clude those  settlements  above  Peoria  accounted  a  part  of 
Canada,  nor  those  settlers  on  the  Wabash  similarly  classed. 
Beside  three  native  villages  near  Fort  Chartres,  with  about 
three  hundred  warriors,  —  for  the  Illinois  tribes  had  been  re- 
duced by  migrations,  —  there  were,  not  far  away,  five  distinct 
French  commmiities :  that  at  Kahokia,  below  the  modern  St. 
Louis ;  one  at  St.  Philippe,  above  Fort  Chartres ;  the  parent 
village  at  Kaskaskia  ;  and  another  gathering  at  Prairie  du  Ro- 
cher.  Still  another,  but  west  of  the  Mississippi,  was  that  at 
Ste.  Genevieve.  A  new  commander  was  soon  to  appear  at  the 
fort,  Macarty  by  name ;  and  with  him  was  to  come  Saussier,  an 
engineer,  prepared  to  strengthen  the  ramparts  of  Fort  Chartres 
in  the  near  future,  the  last  hold  of  the  French  in  the  Great 
Valley. 

Besides  these  centres    there   were    garrisons  at    Mobile,    at 

Tombeckbe  (Tombigbee),  and  at  Alibamons  on  the 

garrisons,       Alabama.     In  this  enumeration  no  reference  has  been 

Mobile,  etc.  ,  i     i  •  <>,  • 

made  to  more  or  less  temporary  and  snirtmg  groups 
of  shanties,  which  the  traders  had  scattered  near  the  centres  of 
the  Indian  population. 

Vaudreuil  counted  on  the  influence  which  the  post  at  Tom- 
beckbe among  the  Choctaws  would  have  in  keeping  that  tribe 
active  in  the  French  interest  against  the  Chickasaws  and  the 
English.  In  this  way  he  hoped  to  preserve  the  communications 
of  Mobile  with  the  regions  dependent  on  it.  From  the  Tom- 
beckbe mixed  parties  of  the  French  and  Choctaws  could  go  by 
canoe  within  seven  or  eight  leagues  of  the  Chickasaws.  There 
were   also  trails  practicable  for  light  guns  toward  the  region 


LE  PAGE   DU  PRATZ'S   MAP,  1757. 


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CAROLINA.  271 

frequented  by  the  Carolinians.  Nevertheless,  a  French  and 
Indian  invasion  of  the  Atlantic  slope  beyond  the  Carolina  fron- 
tier was  hardly  yet  thought  of.  It  followed  a  year  or  two  later, 
in  1753,  when  the  English  and  Irish  —  for  large  numbers  of 
Ulstermen  had  been  settling  in  Carolina  —  were  pressing  the 
Chickasaws  upon  the  French. 

The  community  at  New  Orleans  was  indebted  to  the  Jesuits 

for  the  first  introduction    (1751)  of  the  sugar  cane 

products  of    from  San  Domingo,  though  it  was  to  be  a  dozen  years 

Louisiana.  .  ^    .         .  .  ,  ,      „ 

or  more  before  the  cultivation  increased  enough  tor 
exportation.  The  growth  of  tobacco  and  rice  was  fostered,  and 
cotton  was  becoming  a  productive  crop,  owing  to  a  rude  kind 
of  gin  of  native  origin,  used  in  separating  the  seeds. 

In  February,  1753,  Kerlerec,  a  naval  officer,  succeeded 
Kerierec  Vaudrcuil  as  govcmor.  His  policy  soon  manifested 
vlfudreuu.  itsclf.  He  rcduccd  expenses  by  cutting  down  the 
^'^'  armed  service,  and  made  up  for  it  by  paying  court  to 

the  Choctaws,  to  induce  them  to  fight  his  battles. 

The  Carolinians  were  improving  their  position.  In  a  treaty 
at  Albany,  in  1751,  the  differences  which  their  im- 
mediate neighbors,  the  Catawbas,  had  had  with  the 
Iroquois  were  composed.  This  allied  tribe  was  thus  freed 
for  service  with  the  English.  The  governor  of  Carolina  now 
pushed  his  jurisdiction  quite  up  to  the  mountains,  and  bargained 
with  the  native  owners  for  land  between  the  Savannah  and 
Wateree  rivers.  This  carried  the  English  settlers  well  up  to 
the  sources  of  the  Congaree,  which  ran  midway  between  the 
bounding  rivers.  The  governor  of  North  Carolina  was  not  to 
extend  his  government  for  some  years  yet  beyond  the  Catawba 
River  and  the  mountains  north  of  it.  But  he  was  urging  upon 
the  Lords  of  Trade  the  seizure  of  the  Alleghany  gaps  as  the 
only  measure  to  prevent  further  invasion  by  the  French  (1754). 
The  commissioners  of  this  province,  with  Peter  Randolph  and 
William    Byrd,    sent   by    Virginia,  had,    in*  February,    1756, 

Note.  The  map  on  the  two  following  pages  is  from  the  London  Magazine,  Feb.  1760.  It  was 
engraved  by  T.  Kitchin  "from  an  Indian  draught."  The  river  called  the  "  Mississipi  "  is 
really  the  Ohio,and  Its  two  affluents  are  the  Tennessee  ("  a  branch  of  the  Mississipi  ")  and  the 
Cumberland  ("  Clierokees  or  Hogohegee  R.").  It  illustrates  an  account  of  Gov.  Littleton's  expe- 
dition brought  "by  the  last  ship  from  South  Carolina." 


^»^k 


r^MrJilS 


ClIEROKEBTNATii 

I  ft  ^ifVfM\Thcff  trre^it(4Med  en 


Tat  ^  Xcnidoit^f.i'r : 


^. 


>>^ 

'"-^^.C^^ 


/TV/A/  i/ih^  it  irc/cffi'  f//e^}<ytri 
a/iif1Pa/'ac/te  ai  i>»i'^'a-m/, 
i/u'ifi-> 


"^^^J^efVfttea/t/ 


ffkC^Mi^ 


Old  Ji^fioioe  \o  V  .(ycafin 


^€/i^ 


^ ^fM,aitJtu£iait Jfnu^Ai.  t^T.Uiii/uH,. 


274  LOUISIANA   AND  ITS  INDIANS. 

brought  the  Cherokees  and  Catawbas  into  new  treaty  relations, 
Fort  Lou-      ^^^  ^s  a  result  Fort  Loudoun  was  built  at  the  junc- 
doun.  1756.   ^j^j-^  q£  ^j^g  TelHco  and  Tennessee  rivers.     In  June,  a 
force  from  Virginia  was  marching  to  erect  a  stockade   and  to 
take  the  earliest  military  possession  for  the  English  of  what  is 
now  the  State  of  Tennessee.     As  this  fort  would  relieve  the 
Cherokees  from  maintaining  a  force  at  home  to  hold  the  French 
in  check,  these  Indians  had  agreed  to  furnish  five  hundred  war- 
riors to  aid  the  English  in  the   war,  which  we  shall  later  see 
was  now  raging  at  the  north.     Thus  the  new  fort  was  thought 
to  be  able  to  counteract  any  French  attempt  upon  the  constancy 
of  the   Cherokees.     In  fact,  it  gave  the  English  a  strong  in- 
trenchment,  one  hundred   and  fifty  miles  beyond   their   most 
advanced  settlement.     It  was  not  long  before  Dinwiddie  was 
complaining  that  the  Indians  had  not  furnished  their  promised 
quota.     The  war  had  already  been  begun  in  Virginia.     As  a 
result,  at  the  extreme  east  the  treacherous  Acadians, 
rebelling  at  an  enforced  subjection,  and  having  been 
the  first  at  Chiegnecto  to  shed  blood,  had  at  last  been  forcibly 
ejected  from  their  country.     The    English  had  borne  for  ten 
years  the  risks  of  the  ill-concealed  enmity  of  this  priest-ridden 
people.     As  early  as  1746,  Knowles,  the  governor  of    Louis- 
bourg,  had  foreseen  the    inevitable  necessity  of    some  drastic 
measure  to  subdue  their  treachery.     The  French  Neutrals  — 
as  these   Acadians  were   called  —  had  now,  since  1755,  been 
deported  and  scattered  along  the  Atlantic  coast  of  the  English 
colonies.     While  some  who  were  landed  at  southern  ports  had 
tried  to  work  their  way  inland  to  the  French  flag  at  Duquesne, 
others  had  coasted  back  to  the  north  in  hopes  to  reach  their 
old  homes.     Still  others  had  sought  the  cover  of  the  old  banner 
at  New  Orleans,  and,  settling  along  the  Mississippi  above  that 
town,  had  established  their  new  villages  on  what  is  known  to 
this  day  as  the  Acadian  coast. 

Conrad  Weiser,  in  1755,  was  reporting  from  the  Chickasaws 
The  French  that  the  French  were  generally  hated  by  the  southern 
southern  tribcs,  and  the  Chickasaws  knew  enough  of  the  French 
*"^^^-  and    Choctaw  hostility  to  make  their  testimony  em- 

phatic ;  but  it  was  always  too  much  to  expect  constancy  of  any 
Indian,  and  the  Creeks  were  at  intervals  won  over  to  the  Choc- 


THE   CHEROKEE S. 


275 


taws'  side  and  against  the  English.  Pownall  at  this  day 
(1756)  pictures  the  Creeks  as  debauched  by  the  enemy  and 
alienated  beyond  recovery,  and  in  1757  Colonel  Bouquet  was  put 
in  command  of  some  two  thousand  hastily  armed  militia  to  de- 


THE   CHEROKEE   COUNTRY. 

[From  a  Carte  de  la  Loiiisiane,  etc.,  Covens  et  Mortier,  1758.] 

fend  the  frontiers.  In  July  we  find  him,  from  his  headquarters 
at  Charleston,  urging  the  commander  at  Fort  Loudoun  to  send 
Indian  scouts  toward  the  French  settlements,  and  in  August  he 
reports  that  one  of  his  own  scouts  had  brought  in  word  that  the 


276  LOUISIANA   AND  ITS  INDIANS. 

French  were  building  a  new  fort  on  the  Ohio.  Similar  intelli- 
gence reached  Fort  Cumberland  at  the  same  time,  where  the 
Cherokee  contingent  sent  to  help  the  English  was  quartered. 
Hearing  also  that  the  French  had  succeeded  in  turning  the  Ca- 
tawbas  against  their  tribe,  and  fearing  for  their  villages,  these 
Cherokees  stampeded  for  their  own  country.  The  possibilities 
The  English  ^f  au  iutcr-tribal  struggle  between  these  old  allies  of 
anxious.  ^]^g  English  caused  much  trepidation,  and  Governor 
Lyttleton  of  Carolina  was  preparing  for  the  worst.  It  was  not 
impossible  that  while  the  Choctaws  and  Catawbas  ravaged  his 
frontiers,  the  enemy  might  send  from  Hispaniola  a  naval  force 
to  attack  Charleston  by  sea. 

But  we  need  to  see  how  the  war  had  already  begun  and  was 
progressing  in  the  north.  While  the  French  were  centring 
their  resources  on  the  upper  Ohio,  Kerlerec,  in  1757,  tells  us 
that  he  had  not  had  any  communication  with  France  for  two 
years ;  and  Louisiana  was  hardly  of  immediate  interest  to 
France  during  the  remaining  years  of  the  war. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

UNDECLARED   WAR. 

1750-1754. 

The  expedition  of  C^loron  had  been  a  distinct  enunciation  of 
the  French  purpose  to   maintain  —  war  or  no  war  — 
their  hold  upon  the  Ohio    valley.     The  burying  of  expedition. 
plates  at  the   mouths  of  the   tributaries  of  the   river 
had  evinced   a  claim  to  the    side  valleys  as  well  as  the  main 
stream,  as  indeed  the  inscriptions  on  the  plates  asserted.     The 
English  were  no  longer  in  doubt  of  this   purpose   after  they 
had  secured  one  of  the  plates,  which  was  obtained  "  by  some 
artifice."     Johnson,  as  we  have  seen,  notified  the  Ohio  tribes 
of  this  French  movement,  and  his  own  Indians  promised  to  send 
a  belt  "  through  all  the  nations  as  far  as  the  Ohio  River,  that 
they  may  immediately  know  the  vile  designs  of  the  French." 
We  have  seen   how   the    English   interests    profited,  and  the 
French  prospects  waned,  as  the  result  of  this  warning. 

It  has  been  said  that  in  the  previous  year  the  Ohio  Company 
had  received  their  grant.    Now,  while  Celoron  was  on 
his  march,  the  Virginia  council,  on  July  12,  1749,  au-  yeysmade 
thorized  the  Loyal  Company  to  survey  their  eight  hun-  country. 
dred  thousand  acres,  preparatory  to  seating  families 
in  these  western  parts.     The  bounds  were  to  be  north  of  the 
Fry  and  Jefferson  line,  and  Dr.  Thomas  Walker,  whom  we  have 
already  encountered  on  an  earlier  exploration,  was  sent  with  a 
squad  of  surveyors  to  define  the  metes.     In  March,  1750,   he 
passed  into  the  Shenandoah  valley.     Crossing  the  site  of  the 
modern   Staunton,  he  went  over  the  Alleghanies,  and  striking 
New  River,  followed  it  to  Walker's  Creek,  now  so-  Valuer's 
called.    Taking  this  stream  on  his  way,  he  next  crossed   «=''pe<5'*'"'°- 
to  the  head  of  Clinch  River  and  entered  Cumberland  Gap.    The 
region  which  he  now  entered  was  hardly   yet    alive  with  the 


278 


UNDECLARED  WAR. 


variegated  blooms  of  the  full 
spring,    but  its    stately    trees 
and  blue-grass  meadows,   the 
haunts  of  the  buffalo  and  the 
deer,  were  already  basking  in 
the  promise  of  the  new  year. 
The  wandering   pioneers    fol- 
lowed    up    the     Cumberland 
River,    and  finding  a  spot  to 
their  liking,  they  cleared   the 
ground  and  built  a  house,  fin- 
ishing it  on  April  25.      This 
was  in  all  likelihood  the  ear- 
liest   structure     for 
man's    use    in   what 
is     now    Kentucky, 
though  it  is  possible  that  the 
French  may  have  earlier  erect- 
ed a  cabin  opposite  the  mouth 
of     the     Scioto.        Walker's 
journal  of  this  expedition  re- 
mained    in     manuscript     till 
1888,  when  it  was  printed  at 
Boston  under  the    editing  of 
William  Cabell  Rives.     This 
settlement   long    remained    a 
solitary  post,  and  is  found  laid 
down  in  the  maps  shortly  after 
it  was  occupied. 


First  house 
in  Ken- 
tucky. 


^ 


Traders' 
routes  in  the 
Ohio  coun- 
try. 


The  traders'  routes  in  the 

Ohio  valley,  at  this 

time       or       shortly 

after,  were  farther 
north.  A  wagon  road  from 
Philadelphia       reached      the 

upper    Potomac    at   Watkins's  [After  a  sketch  in  a  letter  of  Peter  Fontame, 

Ferry,  and  a  trail  proceeded     •^"^-''  ^'  ^^^^'  ^''®"  "*  ^^*  Memoirs  of  a  Hu- 

,        "^  PI.  guenot  Family,  p.  35G.] 

thence  to  one  of  the  tributary 

valleys  of  the  Ohio,  beyond  the  divide. 


The  Ohio  Company 


BOUNDARY  DISPUTES.  279 

opened  in  1753  a  trail  from  Will's  Creek  on  the  Potomac, 
where  its  factor  had  established  a  storehouse  in  1749.  This 
path  —  later  to  be  made  a  wagon  road  by  Washington  — 
passed  the  head  of  the  south  branch  of  the  Potomac,  and 
descended  on  the  other  side  of  the  gap  to  the  forks  of  the 
Youghiogheny,  and  so  on  to  the  mouth  of  the  Monongahela. 
These  routes  took  the  passers  away  from  the  haunts  of  the 
French  till  they  struck  the  Ohio  itself.  It  was  not  so  with  the 
trails  still  farther  north,  which,  after  passing  the  mountains, 
came  to  the  Alleghany  or  one  of  its  eastern  branches,  where  the 
English  packmen  were  likely  to  fall  in  with  the  French  coming 
from  Lake  Erie  or  the  Seneca  country. 

The  objective  point  of  all  these  routes,  English  and  French, 
was  the  forks  of  the  Ohio,  where  the  Alleghany  and  ^j^g  ^^^^^  ^^ 
Monongahela  met.  The  site  of  the  modern  Pitts-  *i'eO'"o- 
burgh,  occupied  at  this  time  by  an  Indian  village  of  twenty 
wigwams,  with  fifty  or  more  people  living  there,  was  thus  a 
position  vital  to  whomsoever  possessed  the  Ohio  valley,  and  the 
predestined  scene  of  an  obstinate  but  wavering  conflict. 

The  conditions  of  this  coming  struggle  were  in  geographical 
connections  favorable  to  the  English  ;  but  not  so  in  Boimdar 
all  other  respects.  An  unfortunate  dispute  between  viTwa**^ 
Virginia  and  Pennsylvania  as  to  their  bounds  did  ^d^^pe^^' 
much  to  dispirit  settlers  and  sow  dissensions  among  ^yivania. 
them.  Pennsylvania  claimed  that  the  charter  given  to  Penn 
carried  her  limits  beyond  the  forks,  much  as  the  modern  State 
is  bounded,  though  a  longitudinal  five  degrees  west  of  the  Dela- 
ware River  was  not  easily  computed  in  view  of  the  crooked 
course  of  that  river.  But  Virginia,  then  and  long  afterward 
grasping  in  her  territorial  claims,  denied  it.  She  pressed  a 
vague  demand  to  an  indefinite  northwestern  extension,  which 
stretched  her  newly  created  county  of  Augusta  to  the  Missis- 
sippi and  even  beyond,  "  up  into  the  land  throughout  west  and 
northwest."  She  was  quite  ready  to  call  all  settlers  inhabiting 
this  bountiful  domain  and  up  to  40°  north  latitude  her  loyal 
people.  By  another  claim,  Virginia  was  equally  at  variance 
with  Maryland,  and  she  would  restrict  both  that  province  and 
Pennsylvania  by  a  meridian  which  cut  the  source  of  the  Poto- 
mac. Since  this  river  had  two  upper  branches,  meridian  lines 
cutting  the  springs  of  each  gave    a   considerable  triangle  of 


280  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

intermediate  territory,  which  the  rival  provinces  disputed  about, 
each  naturally  standing  by  that  meridian  which  increased  its 
own  limits  of  jurisdiction. 

All  such  disputes  embarrass  settlements,  and  the  country 
toward  the  forks  of  the  Ohio  had  not  failed  to  suffer  from  this 
cause.  In  time  it  became  further  apparent  that  it  was  the  in- 
terest of  leading  Virginians  to  give  a  personal  advocacy  to  the 
claim  of  their  province  because  it  improved  the  rights  of  the 
Ohio  Company,  and  Pennsylvanians  thought  that  something  of 
the  undue  precipitancy  of  Virginia  in  pressing  her  demands 
even  to  the  verge  of  actual  war  betokened  such  selfish  and  indi- 
vidual interests.  So  matters  of  this  kind  served  to  alienate 
these  neighboring  provinces  from  a  common  object,  while  their 
rivals,  the  French,  in  their  movements  toward  the  Ohio,  were 
certain  to  act  with  a  single  purpose.  The  other  colonies  saw 
this,  and  Governor  Glen  of  South  Carolina  had  not  hesitated 
to  offer  a  warning  rebuke. 

Pennsylvania,  in  her  contest  with  the  French,  had  an  active 
Geor  e  guardian  of  her  interests  in  George  Croghan,  whose 

and^Penn-  scrviccs  iu  bchalf  of  the  province  were  long  and  duti- 
syivania.  f^^j  jjg  claimed  at  a  later  day  that  he  had  never 
asked  from  the  province  any  remuneration  for  his  time,  in  all 
that  he  did  to  keep  the  Indians  fast  to  the  English  policy,  be- 
yond being  recompensed  for  the  hire  of  horses  used  in  running 
Colonel  wii-  cxprcsses.  Croghan  and  Colonel  William  Trent  were 
liam  Trent,  brothcrs-in-law,  and  had  recently  formed  a  partnership 
in  the  fur  trade.  They  clearly  saw  that  the  protection  of  that 
trade  required  the  English  to  fortify  themselves  at  the  forks  of 
the  Ohio.  To  this  end  they  gained  the  consent  of  the  Indians, 
and  asked  the  Pennsylvania  Assembly  to  order  a  stockade  built 
there.  The  project,  though  backed  by  the  Proprietary,  failed 
of  support  in  that  Quaker  body,  and  nothing  was  done,  though 
the  assembly  had  organized  two  counties  in  this  western  region 
which  had  claims  to  be  defended,  —  York  County,  organized  in 
the  southwestern  part  of  the  province  in  1749  ;  and  Cumberland 
County,  taking  all  lands  within  her  bounds  west  and  north  of 
York  County  and  west  of  the  Susquehanna,  which  had  just 
been  set  up  (1750). 

Note.  The  opposite  map  is  from  MitcheU's  Map  of  the  British  Colonies  (1775).  It  shows 
Walker's  and  other  frontier  English  settlements,  and  the  traders'  routes  in  eastern  Kentucky  and 
Tennessee. 


282  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

Virginia,  as  represented  in  the  Ohio  Company,  moved 
Gist  sent  promptly.  On  September  16,  1750,  Christopher  Gist 
owo  Com-  received  his  instructions  from  the  company's  agents, 
pany.  1750.  gy  ^j^ese  ordsrs  he  was  to  go  as  far  as  the  faUs  of  the 
Ohio,  observe  all  passes,  make  note  of  the  tribes  on  the  way 
and  compute  their  numbers,  and  look  out  for  good  level  lauds 
fit  to  be  selected  under  their  grant.  Gist  started  from'  Colonel 
Cresap's  on  October  31,  1750.  His  journal  has  been 
preserved,  as  published  by  Governor  Pownall  in  his 
Topographical  Description  of  North  America  (London,  1776), 
and  his  route  is  pricked  on  the  English  maps  of  Mitchell  and 
Evans.  Gist  was  at  Logstown  on  November  25,  where  he 
learned  that  George  Croghan  and  Andrew  Montour,  sent  out 
by  Pennsylvania,  had  a  little  earlier  passed  that  way. 

The  exact  position  of  tliis  trading-post,  Logstown,  is  in  some 
dispute.    It  was  seventeen  or  eighteen  miles  below  the 

Logstown.  n        1  -IT  p    T^ 

forks,  near  the  modern  town  oi  Economy,  but  whether 
on  the  north  or  south  side  of  the  river  is  in  doubt.  It  was  very 
likely  on  both  sides,  or  at  least  some  of  its  buildings  may  have 
been  on  each  bank.  The  principal  settlement  was  perhaps  on 
the  north  side,  where  it  is  placed  by  Mitchell,  Evans,  Kalm, 
Christian  Post,  and  Hutchins.  Croghan,  in  1765,  places  it  on 
the  south  side  ;  and  Arthur  Lee,  in  1784,  speaks  of  it  as  "  for- 
merly a  settlement  on  both  sides  of  the  river." 

Gist  reached  the  Muskingum  River  on  December  14,  and  saw 
Gist  at  the  ^^^  English  flag  flying  above  Croghan's  house.  Here 
December™'  ^^  fouud  somc  Wyaudots,  divided  in  their  interests 
^^^'  between  the  English  and  French,  perhaps  a  hundred 

families  of  them,  a  fragment  of  the  ancient  Hurons.  They  had 
been  recently  admitted  to  the  Miami  confederacy,  and  were  now 
scattered  in  their  villages  along  the  southern  shore  of  Lake 
Erie,  between  points  marked  by  the  modern  Cleveland  and 
Sandusky  Tolcdo.  They  were  centred  about  Sandusky  Bay,  and 
^^^-  this  region,  judging  from  a  legend  on  Mitchell's  map, 

was  regarded  by  the  English  as  the  chief  point  of  Indian 
interest. 

Gist  had  no  reason  to  complain  of  his  reception.  Here  he 
Croghan  and  ovcrtook  Croghau,  the  idol  of  the  Scotch-Irish  traders, 
Montour.  ^^^  ^^^  g^  Companion  whom  Croghan  had,  almost  as 
conspicuous   as  Croghan   himself  in   this  wilderness   life,  and 


[Colonel  Thomas  Cresap'e  manuscript  map  of  the  sources  of  the  Potomac,  following  a  sketch  in 
Sharpens  Correspondence,  vol.  i.  p.  72  (in  Maryland  Archives,  vol.  vi.).  It  shows  the  divide  between 
the  Potomac  and  the  Monongahela  and  the  line  of  Fairfax  manor,  running  from  the  source  of  the 
North  Branch.] 


284  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

more  picturesque.  This  brisk  personage  was  Andrew  Montour, 
whom  we  have  already  spoken  o£  as  on  the  warpath  against 
the  Catawbas.  These  Indians,  some  years  before,  had  slain  his 
father,  Big  Tree,  an  Oneida  chief.  Montour  had  a  European 
face,  derived  from  his  French  half-breed  mother,  but  it  was 
greased  and  painted  like  a  savage's ;  and  his  garb  was  decked 
out  with  tinkling  spangles.  These  three  men —  Gist,  Cro- 
ghan,  and  Montour  —  were  an  interesting  group,  and  the  history 
of  this  frontier  period  was  not  a  little  shaped  by  each  and  all 
of  them. 

Gist  now  passed  to  a  village  on  the  Hockhocking,  and  later 
to  a  Delaware  town  on  the  Scioto.  Here  he  struck  across  the 
country  to  the  Big  Miami,  where,  at  the  mouth  of  Loramie 
Creek,  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  up  the  stream  from  the 
Pickawii-  Ohio,  he  founded  the  post  of  Picktown,  or  Pickawil- 
lany.  lany,  then  the    most  remote  western    station  of  the 

English,  maintained  in  hardy  defiance  of  the  French  at  De- 
troit. This  trading-post  was  surrounded  by  about  four  hundred 
Indian  families,  forming  a  settlement  known  as  Tawixtwi.  It 
was  presided  over  by  the  head  chief  of  the  Miamis.  The  store- 
houses had  been  built,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  autumn  of  1750, 
and  the  Pennsylvanians  had  gained  the  Indians'  assent  by  a 
free  distribution  of  gifts  made  at  the  hands  of  Croghan  and 
Montour.  Gist  found  about  fifty  English  packmen  gathered 
here,  and  with  their  backing  he  had  little  difficulty  in  making 
a  treaty  with  the  Indians  assembled  there.  Some  Ottawas  had 
been  sent  from  Detroit  in  the  French  interest,  to  prevent  such 
a  treaty,  but  the  Miamis  scoffed  at  their  interference.  The 
French  and  their  allies  did  not  forget  it,  and  during  the  fol- 
lowing winter  they  kiUed  fifty  of  the  Miamis.  The  Ottawas, 
however,  were  far  from  as  constant  as  the  French  would  have 
them,  and  these  deserters  occasionally  came  into  the  Miami 
town,  which  the  French  always  approached  with  great  risks. 

Galissonni^re,  as  we  have  seen,  felt,  before  he  was  recalled, 
Gaiisson-  ^^^^  ^^^  situatiou  iu  this  Ohio  region  was  becoming 
the'^ohkf  grave,  and  the  home  government  had  evinced  little 
region.  interest  in   his   scheme    of    settling  French  peasants 

thfereabouts.  In  December,  1750,  he  had  warned  the  ministry 
that  the  communications  .of  Canada  and  Louisiana  were  in 
danger.       To  Champigny  it  seemed  as   if   the  dominance  of 


DETROIT  AND  NIAGARA.  285 

trade  over  agriculture  was  sure  to  lead  to  evil,  and  Galissoimiere 
forebodingly  pointed  to  the  farming  and  home  life  of  the  Eng- 
lish and  the  growth  which  it  prompted,  as  likely  in  the  end  to 
wrest  the  western  country  from  the  control  of  the  French.  If 
the  English  coidd  only  make  and  keep  a  gap  in  the  chain  of 
the  Fi-ench  posts  southward  to  the  Mississippi,  they  would,  as 
he  thought,  have  every  advantage  in  alienating  the  Indians  still 
adhering  to  the  French.  In  this  manner,  these  rivals  would 
open  their  way  to  Louisiana  and  ultimately  to  Mexico.  Such 
were  the  views  which  Galissonniere  was  now  urging  in  Paris, 
and  he  had  the  sympathy  of  his  successor,  Jonquiere,  in  Quebec. 

There  were  two  places  in  the  western  country  the  possession 
of  which  was  necessary  to  the  French  cause  :  one  was  Detroit  and 
Detroit,  the  other  was  Niagara.  m^-g^x^. 

Celoron  had  been  put  in  command  at  the  straits  in  1750. 
Here  the  Bourbon  flag  was  flying  from  a  palisaded  town,  and 
on  either  hand,  up  and  down  the  Detroit  River,  for  seven  or 
eight  miles,  numerous  Indian  villages  were  scattered.  The 
fixed  population  of  the  post  was,  perhaps,  five  hundred,  but 
including  the  dependent  tribes,  the  whole  number  of  souls  under 
French  control  was  about  twenty-five  himdred.  The  savage 
part  of  this  motley  assemblage  was  essentially  nomadic.  Some 
bands  of  the  Hurons  still  left  there  were  soon  to  follow  their 
brothers  to  the  southern  shore  of  Lake  Erie,  to  be  better  known 
there  as  Wyandots.  Here  they  were  to  become  neighbors  to 
the  Ottawas  already  cabined  in  that  region. 

The  French  of  the  straits  were  making  the  best  of  a  rather 
dull  life.  A  few  families  had  come  there  to  get  the  bounties 
which  were  promised ;  but  on  the  whole,  young  men  predomi- 
nated, and  there  were  few  girls  to  make  them  wives.  Such  was 
the  place  held,  now  by  the  French  and  later  by  the  English, 
in  the  hope  of  controlling  the  destinies  of  the  Ohio  valley. 
Forbes  at  Duquesne  in  1758,  and  Wayne  at  the  Fallen  Tim- 
bers in  1794,  were  at  a  still  later  day  to  change  its  masters, 
with  the  doAAaifall  successively  of  the  French  and  English  flags. 

The  main  channel  of  communication  from  Detroit  southward 
was  by  Fort  Miami  at  the  confluence  of  the  St.  Joseph 

11        -HT  •  11  101  Communica- 

and  the  Maumee  rivers,  and  thence  to  the  Shawnee  tionsof 
town  at  the  mouth  of  the  Scioto,  the  modern  Ports- 


286  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

mouth.  A  second  trail  ran  from  Fort  Miami  to  Fort  Ouiata- 
non  on  the  Wabash.  In  this  direction  the  French  government 
had  strengthened  their  position  by  grants  of  land,  the  titles  to 
which  were  not  all  extinguished  till  a  century  and  more  later. 

The  more  direct  route  into  the  Ohio  valley  from  Montreal 
The  Niagara  ^as  of  coursc  f  roui  the  Niagara  post,  and  so  on  to  the 
route.  more  easterly  portages  of  Lake  Erie.     We  have  seen 

that  Celoron  in  1749  had  gone  by  Lake  Chautauqua.  A  better 
route  was  now  recognized  as  passing  by  Presqu'  Isle.  The 
safety  of  these  passages  depended  upon  the  temper  of  the  Iro- 
quois, and  both  English  and  French  had  efficient  and  wily 
agents  to  employ  among  them,  in  William  Johnson 
Johnson  and  and  Joucairc.  The  Irish  squire  of  the  Mohawk  was 
quite  the  equal  of  the  Frenchman  in  the  arts  which 
allured  the  savage.  Johnson  had  been  made  a  member  of  the 
New  York  council  in  May,  1750,  and  he  told  his  associates  that 
declared  hostilities  would  be  more  tolerable  than  the  uncertain- 
ties of  the  game  of  bribery,  which  both  French  and  English 
were  now  playing.  "  I  can  at  any  time  get  an  Indian  to  kill 
any  man  by  paying  him  a  small  matter,"  he  said.  "  Going  on 
in  this  manner  is  worse  than  open  war."  The  fact  was  that 
what  one  side  did  the  other  must  do,  and  there  seemed  no 
remedy  as  long  as  peace  ostensibly  lasted. 

Jonquiere  was  not  only  sending  warning  letters  to  Governor 
Theiro-  Clinton,  while  the  English  government  was  entering 
quois.  counter  protests  in  Paris,  but  the  Canadian  governor 

was  instructing  his  emissaries  to  win  over  the  Cayugas.  As 
the  season  went  on,  Conrad  Weiser  discovered  through  his  spies 
that  the  Senecas  were  in  the  same  way  being  roused  to  attack 
the  English  on  the  Ohio.  The  French  priests  were  doing  their 
part,  and  it  was  reported  they  were  making  converts  by  the  hun- 
dred among  the  Onondagas.  The  results  of  all  these  agencies 
were  enough  to  make  Jonquiere  confident.  "  The  English  in- 
terests among  the  Six  Nations  can  be  of  no  consideration  any 
longer,"  he  said.  "  The  Indians  speak  with  contempt  of  the 
New  York  and  Albany  people,  and  much  the  same  of  the  rest 
of  the  English  colonies." 

Amid  all  this  supposed  defection  of  the  Iroquois,  the  English 

still  held  fast    to   Oswego,  and   its  increasing  trade 

swego.        sliowed  that  the   French  traffic  was  proportionately 


PIQUET.  287 

decreasing,  and  that  the  founding  of  Fort  Rouille  (Toronto) 
had  not  done  what  was  hoped  for. 

It  was  evident  that  Oswego  must  fall,  or  at  least  its  capture 
be  attempted  by  the  French,  as  a  first  act  of  declared  hostilities. 
Galissonniere,  in  Paris,  was  urging  preparations  for  it.  So  Jon- 
quiei'C  was  instructed  to  stir  up  the  Iroquois  to  attempt  its  de- 
struction. He  was  cautioned  to  be  polite  in  aU  his  intercourse 
with  the  English,  so  as  not  to  disclose  his  purpose. 

No  business  could  better  suit  Piquet,  the  Jesuit  master  of  La 
Presentation  (Ogdensburg).  The  government  at  Que- 
bec had  for  some  time  supplied  him  with  clothing, 
arms,  and  ammunition,  to  win  the  confederates  and  to  get  their 
consent  to  build  a  fort  at  Irondequoit.  This  priest,  saint  or 
rascal  as  he  was  to  one  and  another,  was  a  man  of  energetic 
purpose,  fertile  in  devices,  and  he  had  completely  won  the 
admiration  of  both  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  rulers  at  Quebec. 
He  is  said  to  have  boasted  that  his  services  did  more  for 
France  than  troops  or  money.  His  ardor  was  sometimes  ques- 
tionable, at  least,  when  his  garb  as  a  priest  became  the  cloak  of 
a  skulking  enemy. 

It  was  he  who  was  now  to  do  service  in  reconnoitring  Oswego. 
He  discovered  that  there  were  hills  on  all  sides  to  command  it, 
—  a  fact  not  lost  upon  Montcalm  a  few  years  later.  He  was 
aware  that  the  secret  of  Oswego  as  a  trading-post  depended 
upon  the  fact  that  two  beaver-skins  would  buy  as  good  a  brace- 
let at  Oswego  as  ten  at  Niagara. 

There  was  cause  for  alarm  at  Albany,  when  it  was  learned 
that  the  French  had  really  secured  command  of  Lake 
Ontario  by  launching  a  three-masted   vessel  at  Fort  onLakr*' 
Frontenac.       This   ugly  fact   was  one  of  the  points 
which  came  up  in  July,  1751,  at  a  conference  which  Clinton  had 
called  at  Albany.     The  purpose  of  the  meeting   was 
to  form  some   alliance  among  the  colonies,  if  possible,  conference. 
and  a  league  with  the  Six  Nations.     The  only  colonies 
which  responded  were  Massachusetts  and  South  Carolina,  —  the 
latter  for  the  first  time  brought  to  an  acknowledgment  of  her 
joint  interests  with  New  York.    The  southern  province's  present 
object  was  to  mediate  between  the  Catawbas  and  the   iroquoisand 
Iroquois.     The  reconciliation  of  these  tribes  had  long  Catawbas. 
been  desired,  and  often  attempted,  as  their  enmity  was  awkward 


288  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

for  tlie  colonies  north  and  south,  considering  that  both  were 
friendly  to  their  immediate  English  neighbors.  The  contests  of 
these  foes  usually  taking  place  in  Virginia,  the  government  of 
that  province  had  an  almost  equal  interest  in  the  pacification 
of  the  combatants.  Colonel  Lee  of  Virginia  had  already  tried 
within  a  year  or  two  to  see  what  effect  a  bestowal  of  gifts  on 
each  would  do.  Governor  Glen  of  Carolina  had  only  recently 
been  complaining  that  the  Senecas,  on  pretense  of  warring  on 
the  Catawbas,  were  plundering  the  whites  of  his  province. 
The  Senecas  had  replied  that  if  the  Catawbas  would  send  some 
chief  men  to  Albany,  they  would  confirm  a  peace.  This 
brought  about  the  meeting  at  Albany  under  consideration,  when 
the  grounds  of  reconciliation  were  accepted  by  both  tribes,  the 
Catawbas  agreeing  to  restore  their  Iroquois  prisoners. 

Farther  than  this,  Clinton  got  little  satisfaction  out  of  the 
conference,  and  he  grew  to  feel  that  nothing  but  compulsory 
legislation  on  the  part  of  Parliament  could  ever  bring  the 
colonies  into  a  pact  for  common  defense. 

Jonquiere,  at  Quebec,  was  hardly  less  uneasy  than  his  antag- 
onist at  Albany.  He  felt  that  the  government  at 
and'cihr  Paris,  in  requiring  him  to  drive  the  English  from  the 
Ohio,  was  putting  a  task  upon  him  difficult,  if  not 
impossible,  to  accomjjlish,  unless  he  could  be  reinforced  by  royal 
troops  ;  and  he  could  get  no  promise  of  these.  He  therefore 
asked  to  be  recalled. 

Meanwhile,  the  news  from  the  Ohio  was  disquieting.  Small- 
Affairs  on  pox  had  broken  out  among  the  French,  and  there  was 
the  Ohio.  great  scarcity  in  their  supplies.  Longueil  reported 
that  if  the  disease  would  only  seize  the  rebel  tribes  about 
them,  it  would  be  "  fully  as  good  as  an  army."  Lingeris  at 
Ouiatanon  sent  word  that  the  best  he  could  do  with  the  Kicka- 
poos  and  Maseoutins  was  to  keep  them  neutral.  "  They  were 
nourishing  vipers,"  as  Vaudreuil  sent  word  from  New  Orleans, 
if  they  persisted  in  harboring  the  English  traders. 

It  looked  as  if  everything  was  going  so  far  wrong  that  it  is 
Jonquiere  ^^^^  woudcr  that  Jonquicrc  desired  a  quieter  life.  Be- 
dies.  1752.  gi(jgg^  jjg  ^^s  uow  a  man  of  seventy-seven,  and  could 
ill  bear  the  strain.  It  happened  that  before  he  could  be  re- 
lieved, he  suddenly  died  in  the  spring  of  1752  (March  6),  not 
in  the  best  of  humor  with  a  people  that  believed  stories  of  his 


CHRISTOPHER   GIST.  289 

corruption  and  saw  evidence  of  liis  nepotism.  He  sank  amid 
the  last  solemnities  of  his  religion,  but  his  detractors  said  that 
with  all  his  riches  he  died  amid  the  smoking  glare  of  tallow 
dips,  his  parsimony  even  in  that  hour  forbidding  the  cost  of 
wax.  Longueil,  who  was  in  authority  at  Montreal,  hastened 
to  Quebec  to  take  the  reins  of  power  during  the  interregnum. 

We  left  Gist  at  Pickawillany,  and  need  to  follow  him  farther. 
He  was  impressed  with  what  he  deemed  the  power 

.  Gist  at 

of  the  Miamis  or  Twightwees,  as,  following  the  Eng-  Pickawii- 
lish  habit,  he  called  them.     "  They  are  accounted  the  tiie  Twight- 
most  powerful  people  to  the  westward  of  the  English 
settlements,"  he  says;  "at  present  very  well  affected  toward 
the  English  and  fond  of  their  alliance  with  them."     They  had 
sought  this  connection  by  breaking  with  the  French  and  pass- 
ing over  the  Wabash. 

Gist's  course  from  this  point  would,  according  to  his  instruc- 
tions, have  taken  him  to  the  falls  of  the  Ohio,  but  rumors 
reached  him  of  parties  of  French  lingering  in  that  region,  and 
he  thought  it  j)rudent  to  retrace  his  steps  in  part,  so  as  to  de- 
scend the  Scioto.  At  its  mouth  he  found  a  colony  of  Shawnees, 
living  in  what  was  usually  called  the  Lower  Shawnee  shawnees  of 
town.  This  village  had  not  been  long  established,  but  "'^  ^"''*''- 
it  had  already  become  a  station  for  traders.  It  was  about  two 
hundred  and  seventy  miles  from  Philadelphia  as  the  Pennsylva- 
nia packmen  commonly  went.  The  Shawnees  at  this  time  were 
partly  at  least  reclaimed  from  the  French  interests,  which  they 
had  embraced  in  the  last  war. 

Gist  had  now  in  his  circuitous  route  come  in  contact  with  all 
the  great  divisions  of  the  Ohio  tribes,  and  for  the  Tiieowo 
most  part  he  felt  that  the  English  could  depend  upon  *"^^^' 
them  in  the  coming  struggle.  Governor  Hamilton  of  Pennsyl- 
vania had  already,  through  his  scouts,  come  to  this  conclusion, 
and  had  communicated  it  to  Clinton  in  May,  1750.  Later  in 
the  year,  Croghan  was  on  the  Ohio,  reporting  that  the  French 
were  trying  to  persuade  the  Indians  to  let  them  build  a  fort. 
The  Indians  on  their  part  were  warning  the  English  that 
war  must  come,  and  that  they  should  be  prepared  for  it  by 
building  a  fort  themselves.  Croghan's  j^lan  was  to  induce  the 
Shawnees  and  Twightwees  to  move  farther  up  the  Ohio,  so  as  to 


290  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

be  nearer  English  support.  He  was  confident  the  Wyandots 
toward  Lake  Erie  would  stand  firm.  In  the  following  April 
(1751),  the  Indians  in  a  conference  with  Croghan  prepared  a 
distinct  request  to  the  Pennsylvania  authorities  to  fortify  the 
forks  of  the  Ohio  for  the  protection  of  them  and  the  English 
traders.  A  few  weeks  later,  Croghan  and  Montour  confronted 
the  French  agents  at  Logstown,  each  distributing  presents  to 
the  Indians.  There  was  such  decided  success  on  the  part  of  the 
English  in  this  rivalry  that  Joncaire  apologized  to  Croghan 
for  the  necessity,  in  obedience  to  his  orders,  of  attempting 
to  diminish  the  English  influence.  Croghan  speaks  highly  of 
Montour's  aid  in  this  work  :  "  He  is  very  capable  of  doing  busi- 
ness, and  is  looked  upon  by  all  the  Indians  as  one  of  their 
chiefs." 

Unfortunately  for  the  English,  the  Delawares  and  Iroquois  — 
who  occupied  the  eastern  and  southeastern  parts  of 
wares  and  what  is  uow  the  State  of  Ohio,  and  were  thus  inter- 
roquois.  p^gg^j  bctwccn  the  Wyandots,  Miamis,  and  Shawnees, 
and  the  English  f i^ontiers  —  were  the  least  to  be  trusted  in  the 
coming  emergency.  The  Delawares  were  nowhere  gathered  in 
compact  settlements,  and  had  not  forgotten  the  treatment  which 
they  had  received  from  the  Pennsylvanians  in  being  ejected  from 
the  Susquehanna  regions.  Gist  says  that  the  Delaware  town 
on  the  east  side  of  the  Scioto  was  the  farthest  west  of  these 
wandering  people.  They  had  about  five  hundred  warriors,  and 
in  Gist's  judgment  could  be  depended  upon.  By  this  time 
more  of  the  Iroquois  were  living  on  the  upper  Ohio  than  were 
left  in  their  original  country  in  New  York,  and  in  Weiser's 
opinion  it  was  quite  uncertain  how  they  would  turn  when 
pressed  to  take  sides,  —  especially  the  Mingoes,  a  branch  of  the 
Senecas,  who  were  prominent  in  this  region. 

This  Lower  Shawnee  town,  where  Gist  now  crossed  the  Ohio, 
is  described  a  few  years  later  by  Mitchell  as  having 
Shawnee  "  an  English  factory,  and  being  by  water  four  hun- 
dred miles  from  the  forks  of  the  Ohio."  It  was  on 
March  13,  1751,  that  Gist  thus  entered  upon  the  Kentucky 
territory.  With  the  aid  of  a  compass,  he  records  his  courses 
carefully,  and  we  easily  follow  his  further  progress.     He  went 

Note.     Tlie  opposite  map  is  from  Mitchell's  Map  of  the  British  Colonies  (1775),  showing 
Gist's  route  south  of  the  Ohio  River. 


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292  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

lip  the  Licking,  crossed  the  divide  to  the  Kentucky  River, 
passed  up  that  stream,  and  went  eastward  to  the  head  of  the 
Clinch  River.  Thence  passing  New  River,  he  went  over  the 
mountains  to  the  springs  of  the  Roanoke,  —  thus  in  part  re- 
versing the  route  of  Walker,  —  and  completed  in  May,  1751, 
his  protracted  journey  of  about  twelve  hundred  miles. 

He  found  on  his  return  to  Virginia  that  the  Ohio  Company 
Qigj.g  had  planned  other  work  for  him,  and  on  July  16,  its 

expedition,  agcnts  gavc  him  new  instructions.  He  was,  this  time, 
1751-52.  ^Q  gjjjj  ^  good  passage  from  Will's  Creek  to  the  Mo- 
nongahela,  whence  he  was  to  course  the  south  bank  of  the  Ohio 
to  the  Big  Kanawha,  which  he  was  to  ascend  in  search  of  good 
lands.  On  November  4,  he  was  on  his  way.  Leaving  the  com- 
pany's storehouse  at  Will's  Creek,  he  found  a  new  gap  to  the 
Monongahela,  nearer  than  that  used  by  the  traders,  which  led 
him  to  the  middle  fork  of  the  Youghiogheny.  He  was  ab- 
sent on  this  second  quest  till  March,  1752,  and  upon  his  re- 
port being  made,  the  company  in  October  petitioned  the  gov- 
ernor to  be  allowed  to  take  up  two  hundred  thousand  acres  on 
the  south  side  of  the  Ohio.  Other  grants  having  already  been 
made  in  this  region,  there  were  difficulties  which  the  company 
sought  to  surmount  by  promising  to  settle  upon  their  lands  two 
hundred  families  more  than  they  had  before  agreed,  and  to  build 
The  Ohio  ^^  additional  fort.  Upon  this  a  way  was  found  to 
andXe"^  yield,  and  the  petition  was  granted.  In  April,  1752, 
Indians.  Qjg^  ^^^^  ggjj^  amoug  the  Indians  once  more,  this  time 
to  induce  them  to  take  land  within  the  company's  grant,  and 
by  living  among  the  white  settlers  to  form  a  mutual  support 
against  the  French. 

The  Virginians  were  thus  outdoing  the  Pennsylvanians  in 
offers  of  alliance,  for  when,  just  before  this  (February,  1752), 
the  Indians  had  asked  Hamilton  to  assist  them  against  the 
French,  the  governor  had  been  obliged  to  acknowledge  (April 
24)  that  "  those  who  have  the  disposition  of  the  public  money 
are  entirely  averse  "  to  affording  such  help.  This  meant  that 
the  Quaker  element  in  Pennsylvania  still  held  the  political 
ascendency  in  its  assembly. 

With  ail  this  lack  of  concert  on  the  English  part,  the  French 
The  French  had  uot  as  yct  succcedcd  in  Undermining  the  English 
despondent,    influence  ;  and  when  in  April  Longueil  was  possessed 


CONFERENCE  AT  LOGS  TOWN.  293 

of  Jonquiere's  power,  he  complained  that  he  was  invested  with 
the  government  "  under  very  unfortunate  circumstances."  "  The 
English,"  he  adds,  "  look  with  longing  eyes  both  on  the  lands 
of  the  Beautifid  Eiver  [Ohio]  and  generally  on  all  that  vast 
country."  Joncaire's  reports  had  disheartened  him.  The 
Piankashaws  had  declared  against  the  French,  he  learned,  and 
nothing  could  save  the  Ohio  country  but  to  throw  into  it  a 
sufficient  force. 

As  the   summer  came  on,  the  Virginians  were   again    astir. 
Gist,  with  Colonel  Trent  and  others,  met  the  Indians  at 

.  Conference 

Logstown  in  the  latter  part  of  May,  and  the  meeting  atLogstown. 
was  prolonged  till  toward  the  middle  of  June  (1752). 
It  was  the  object  of  the  Ohio  Company  to  get  the  tribes  to  con- 
firm the  cessions  which  the  Indians  had  made  at  Lancaster 
in  1744.  They  soon  encountered  opposition  from  the  Shaw- 
nees  and  Mingoes,  but  with  the  assistance  of  Croghan  and 
Montour,  representing  the  interests  of  Pennsylvania,  the  dis- 
affected tribes  yielded,  and  between  June  9  and  13  difficulties 
were  composed,  and  a  deed  was  finally  passed.  The  Indians  at 
the  same  time  agreed  not  to  molest  the  Virginia  settlers  on  the 
south  side  of  the  Ohio.  They  also,  recounting  the  neglect  by 
Pennsylvania  of  their  request,  repeated  to  the  Virginia  govern- 
ment their  wish  to  have  an  English  fort  at  the  forks  of  the 
Ohio. 

The  way  was  now  opened  for  settlers  to  push  down  the  Mo- 
nongahela,  and  twelve  families  were  soon  picking-  out 

1-1  1  1  -11  /-I  •  .  1     Settlers  on 

their  home  lots  along  its  banks.     Cjist  was  instructed  the  Monon- 

1    (•  1  If    r^-i  '  gahela. 

to  lay  out  a  town  and  tort  at  the  mouth  of  Chartier  s 
Creek,  four  miles  below  the  forks,  while  Trent,  laden  with 
messages  and  gifts,  was  sent  forward  to  the  Miamis'  country  to 
confirm  the  alliance  of  these  western  tribes.  He  found  the  con- 
ditions here  far  from  as  satisfactory  as  he  had  left  them  near 
the  forks. 

A  season  of  disquietude  among  the  French,  when  their  traders 
had  been  pushed  back  toward  Detroit,  had  been  fol-  pj^jj^. 
lowed  in  the  early  summer  of  1752  by  an  organized  at-  Stacked. 
tack  on  the  English  post  at  Pickawillany.    The  act  was  ^'^^"' 
simply  necessary,  if  the  French  were  to  maintain  their  position 
at  Detroit.     The  half-breed,  Charles  Langlade,  had  come  from 
Mackinac  with  a  following  of  Ottawas  and  Chippeways,  and  he 


294  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

was  equal  to  the  emergency.  Celoron  found  in  him  an  active  lieu- 
tenant, and  with  a  force  of  about  two  hundred  and  forty  French 
and  Indians,  Langlade  fell  upon  the  Miami  town,  and  savage 
and  English  trader  fled  before  him.  By  this  attack,  the  valleys 
of  the  Maumee  and  Miami  were  delivered  from  the  presence  of 
the  pestilent  English.  The  legend  on  Evans's  later  map  says 
that  it  was  this  success  which  prompted  the  French  to  under- 
take their  ambitious  scheme  of  establishing  armed  posts  through- 
out the  Ohio  valley,  and  so  finally  provoked  the  armed  outbreak 
under  Washington. 

Meanwhile  the  movements  of  the  rival  powers  in  Europe  were 
bringing  the  conflict  nearer.     Charles  Townshend  was 

Portents 

in  Europe,  urging  (1752)  Warlike  measures  in  the  English  Com- 
mons. Bigot,  the  Canadian  iutendant,  was  pressing 
like  measures  on  the  Paris  ministry.  In  July,  the  Marquis 
Duquesne  Duqucsue  de  Mennevillc  had  reached  Quebec,  reliev- 
m  Quebec.  |jjg.  Lougucil  of  his  temporary  command.  His  in- 
structions recapitidated  the  old  story  of  La  Salle's  discovery  of 
the  Mississippi,  as  a  warrant  for  the  French  claims,  and  in  the 
main  he  was  authorized  to  carry  out  the  projects  which  Galis- 
sonniere  had  advocated.  The  government  fairly  acknowledged 
that  their  past  policy  of  inciting  one  tribe  against  another  had 
failed,  and  there  was  no  resort  now  but  to  exert  a  direct  force 
themselves.  Canada,  at  this  time,  could  muster  about  thirteen 
thousand  militia,  and  Duquesne  ordered  stated  drills  among 
them.  He  also  put  in  as  good  condition  as  possible  the  small 
body  of  regular  troops  which  were  scattered  in  the  various  gar- 
risons. 

The  strategic  point  seemed  for  the  present  to  be  among  the 
The  Miamia  Miamis.  In  the  spring  of  1753,  Joncaire  was  at  work 
French.  *^^^  amoug  them,  and  they  soon  sued  for  peace.  The  as- 
^^^^'  semblies  of  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia,  anticipating 

this  defection,  had  bestirred  themselves,  and  had  ordered  Trent 
and  Montour  to  carry  gratuities  to  these  western  tribes.  It 
was  too  late,  however,  to  regain  them.  The  French  had  accom- 
plished their  purpose. 

Note.  The  map  on  the  opposite  page  is  from  Sayer  and  Jefferys'  reproduction  of  Danville's 
North  America  (London),  showing  the  geography  of  the  Ohio  valley  as  understood  in  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century. 


'"^-4. 

^i^ 


296 


UNDECLARED    WAR. 


It  was  now  evident  that  the  English  must  direct  their  close 
Forks  of  the  attention  upon  the  forks  of  the  Ohio.  Dinwiddie  had 
^^°"  already,  in  December,  1752,  appealed  to  the  Board  of 

Trade  for  aid  in  establishing  some  forts  on  the  Ohio.     He  had 


'""^,^411 


^4*  I. 


^?'   ^l^^^^'^ 


w/ 


f^'j^-;^.  /'  =    L-  ^  \- 1.«  'I  "^ 


s  ^  '^  f^  '1^'^ 


[From  Hutchins's  Topographical  Description  of  Virginia,  London,  1778.] 

also  asked  for  twenty  or  thirty  small  cannon.  He  informed  the 
board  that  a  practicable  road,  made  by  the  Indians,  already  ex- 
isted, by  which  with  only  eighty  miles  of  land-carriage  such 
guns  coidd  be  carried  from  the  head  of  the  Potomac  to  a  branch 


THE  FRENCH  CREEK  ROUTE. 
[From  Howell's  Map  of  Pennsylvania,  1791.] 


PITT 


Note.  This  and  the  opposite  map  (continuing  this  one  at  the  top)  are  from  an  original  contempo- 
rary sketch,  reproduced  in  the  Aspinwall  Papers,  in  4  3fass.  Hist.  Coll.,  vol.  ix.  p.  302.  It  shows 
the  usual  route  from  Fort  Pitt  to  Venango,  Le  Boeuf,  and  Presqu'  Isle.  The  capital  letters  are  ex- 
plained in  a  key  giving  the  width  of  the  various  streams,  to  which  the  letters  are  attached.  The  key 
adds :  "  Opposite  Venango  the  river  is  200  yards  wide ;  tlie  mouth  of  French  Creek  100  yards  wide  ; 
a  wagon  road  may  be  made  over  any  of  the  hills." 


300  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

of  the  Ohio.  It  was  reckoned  that  from  Will's  Creek  on  the 
Potomac,  over  the  divide  to  the  Monongahela,  and  so  on  to  the 
forks  of  the  Ohio,  was  a  distance  of  one  hundred  and  eight 
miles. 

It  was  a  pressing  question  whether  the  French  or  English 
Routes  to  would  first  get  to  the  forks  in  force.  The  English 
the  forks.  must  rcach  it  by  a  course  of  more  than  a  hundred 
miles  from  the  Potomac,  or  by  two  hundred  from  Philadelphia. 
The  Pennsylvanians  maintained  a  good  road  to  Will's  Creek, 
but  from  this  point  it  was  necessary  to  foUow  the  Virginia  route 
to  the  Monongahela.  They  had,  however,  an  independent  trail 
for  horses,  which  foUowed  up  the  Susquehanna  and  ran  for 
sixty-seven  miles  over  the  mountains,  and  reached  the  Alleghany 
about  twelve  miles  above  the  forks. 

Once  at  the  junction  of  the  Alleghany  and  Monongahela,  the 
The  Ohio  positiou  was  a  commanding  one,  well  worth  the  strug- 
vaUey.  g]g  ^^  acquire  it.    The  Ohio  lay  in  front,  with  a  water- 

shed along  its  main  stream,  and  branches  of  over  two  hundred 
thousand  square  miles,  with  about  five  thousand  miles  of  navi- 
gable water.  The  current  moved  at  three  miles  an  hour  in 
its  ordinary  flow.  The  banks  were  well  elevated,  with  bluffs 
occasionally  rising  to  two  hundred  and  fifty  and  sometimes  to  six 
hundred  feet,  and  there  was  throughout  most  of  its  course  an 
agreeable  absence  of  "  drowned  lands."  The  meandering  chan- 
nel made  a  distance  not  much  short  of  a  thousand  miles  in 
reaching  the  Mississippi,  while  as  the  bird  flies  the  distance  was 
shortened  by  a  third.  This  was  the  natural  highway  for  a  great 
people. 

In  the  autumn  of  1752,  Marin  was  sent  by  Duquesne  to  be- 
gin fortifiying  the  line  of  march  which  Celoron  had 
expedition,  followcd  in  1749.  Leaving  Niagara,  the  leading  de- 
tachment of  three  hundred  men  began  to  build  a  fort 
at  Chautauqua  Creek,  but  when  Marin  himself  came  up  with 
the  main  body,  he  disapproved  the  position  and  moved  on  to 
Presqu'  Isle.  Here  he  cut  a  road,  twenty-one  miles  long,  through 
a  level  tract  of  country  to  the  Kiviere  aux  Boeufs.  This  road 
is  still  in  use,  the  local  antiquaries  say,  for  a  distance  of  seven 
Port  miles  south  of  Erie;  and  as  late  as  1825,  cannon- 

Le  Boeuf.  \)2,\[?,  and  othcr  military  relics  were  occasionally  found 
along  its  route.     Within  the  limits  of  the  modern  Waterford 


MARIN'S  EXPEDITION. 


301 


(Pa.)  lie  built  a  stockade,  and  called  it  Fort  Le  BcEuf.  It  was 
on  the  west  branch  of  French  Creek,  and  was  the  first  armed 
station  of  the  French  in  the  northeastern  parts  of  the  Great 
Valley. 

Thus  much  had  apparently  been  accomplished  without  the 


[From  the  Amirique  Septentrionale,  par  Mitchel,  Paris  :  par  Le  Rouge,  1777 :  corrigee  en  1776 
par  M.  Hawkins.  It  shows  the  routes  from  Duquesne.  The  most  westerly  fort  on  Lake  Erie 
is  "Sandoski,  bati  par  les  Fran,  en  1751."] 


English  getting  any  definite  knowledge  of  the  movement.  In 
the  following  spring  (April  20, 1753),  Johnson  learned  by  run- 
ners from  Onondaga  that  there  was  a  force  oatherino- 

T-.  -o  1  .    1      1  1  .  1    ^     The  French 

at  Jbort  rrontenac,  which  he   suspected  was  intended  rehiforced. 

for  the  Ohio.     It  was  in  fact  reinforcements  which 

were   to   join   Marin's   advance  already  there.     On  May  14, 


302  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

thirty-three  canoes  of  this  force  were  seen  to  pass  Oswego,  and 
on  the  next  day  Captain  Stoddart  notified  Johnson  of  the  event, 
but  grossly  exaggerated  the  numbers,  when  he  represented  that 
this  hostile  movement  was  carried  on  with  six  thousand  men. 
He  added  that  the  Indians  accompanying  the  French  were 
taken  as  hunters,  and  had  refused  to  be  combatants  against  the 
English. 

In  May,  Governor  Hamilton  was  aroused,  and  urged  the 
Pennsylvania  Assembly  to  succor  the  Indians  on  the  Alle- 
ghany, so  as  to  prevent  their  being  overcome  by  the  French. 
Messengers  conveying  tidings  of  the  danger  were  disjDatched 
both  to  the  Maryland  authorities  and  to  the  Ohio  Indians.  Some 
of  these  had  already  made  protests  to  the  French  commanders, 
but  they  got  nothing  but  defiant  answers.  The  Half-King,  a 
local  Mingo  chief,  sent  messengers  to  the  settlements  for  arms ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  Marin  found  no  difficulty  in  getting 
the  aid  of  Delawares,  Shawnees,  and  Senecas,  to  furnish  men 
and  horses  to  carry  his  supplies  over  the  portage. 

The  nearest  English  at  this  time,  except  wandering  traders, 

were  at  Logstown  on  the  Ohio,  a  score  of  miles  below 

the  forks.      Croghan,  foreseeing  danger,  had  before 

this  advised  the  Pennsylvania  authorities  to  stockade  this  post, 

and  to  compel  the  traders  to  keep  within  it  and  not  heedlessly 

wander  about. 

When  the  news  of  this  threatening  movement  reached  the 
English  ministry,  Holderness  at  once  instructed  the  Pennsyl- 
vania governor  to  use  force,  if  necessary,  to  expel  the  French 
from  "the  undoubted  limits  of  his  Majesty's  dominions."  But 
before  this  injunction  was  received,  Franklin  and  others  met  a 
Conference  deputation  of  Ohio  Indians  in  council  (September, 
sepSer,  1753)  at  Carlisle  (Pa.).  The  representation  of  these 
"^^"  Indian  delegates  was   that   their   permission   to   the 

English  to  occupy  the  forks  had  drawn  upon  them  the  enmity 
of  the  French.  They  averred  that  they  had  already  three  times 
protested  against  their  movements  in  French  Creek,  but  they 
had  got  no  satisfaction.  The  French  had  assured  them  that 
they  intended  in  all  events  to  fortify  Venango,  the  Forks,  Logs- 
town,  and  Beaver  Creek,  and  that  nothing  could  prevent  it. 
Upon  this  presentation  of  the  French  purpose,  Croghan  sug- 
gested, and  the  Indians  m-ged,  that  the  English  at  once  develop 


WASHINGTON  AT  LE  BCEUF.  303 

and  strengthen  their  trading-posts  at  Logstown,  the  mouth  of 
the  Kanawha,  and  at  the  forks.  If  the  English  would  do  so, 
the  Indians  promised  to  come  to  those  posts  for  their  traf- 
ficking. 

Already,  in  August,  Colonel  Trent  had  been  sent  by  the  Vir- 
ginia  authorities  to  look  over  the   ground  at  the  forks,  and 
select  a  site  for  the  proposed  stockade.     While  he  was  return- 
ing to  tidewater    to  make    report,  the  Mingo  Half-  TheHaif- 
King,  who  had  been  with  him,  went  on  to  Le  Boeuf ,  ^'bifged  by 
to  renew  the  protest  to  Marin.    This  native  chief  later  ^^''"'" 
gave  Washington  an  account  of  the  stern  way  in  which  the 
French  officer  received  him.    "  I  will  go  down  the  river,  and 
I  loill  build  upon  it,"  was  all  the  answer  he  got.     Marin  was 
doubtless  satisfied  from  the  HaK-King's  bearing  that  the  French 
advance  under  himself  would  be  resisted,  but  fate  had  deter- 
mined that  another  leader  should  bear  the  brunt  of  ^^^-^  ^^^^ 
the  conflict.     In  October,  Marin  died  at  his  post ;  but  ^53°''^'^' 
it  was  not  till  December  that  Legardeur  de  St.  Pierre,  ^1  st*pre'rre 
who  was  just  back  from  his  search  for  the  western  succeeds. 
sea,  and  appointed  to  succeed  Marin,  arrived  at  his  post.     He 
came  to  a  diminished  garrison,  for  a  considerable  part  of  the 
force  had  been  sent    back  to  Montreal,  where  they  could  be 
better  supported  during  the  winter.     The  ajDpearance  of  these 
on  their  return  convinced  Duquesne  that  Marin  had  been  wise 
in  not  pushing  on  too  rapidly,  for  the  fatigues  of  the  campaign 
had  borne  heavily  upon  them.     He  wi'ote  of  them,  that  to  have 
tried  to  reach  the  Mississippi  would  only  have  choked  the  river 
with  their  dead  bodies.    The  return  of  this  detachment  had  been 
observed  from  Oswego,  and  in  ignorance  of  its  meaning.  Gov- 
ernor de  Lancey  was  encouraged  to  think  the  danger  was  over. 

When  Trent  gave  his  report  to  Dinwiddie,  that  governor  de- 
termined to  make  a  formal  demand  upon  the  French  Washington 
to  withdraw.  He  prepared  the  necessary  letter,  and  LTBouf. 
selected  Washington,  then  adjutant-general  of  the  ^^^^" 
Virginia  forces,  to  deliver  it.  His  instructions,  dated  October 
30, 1753,  were  to  proceed  to  Logstown,  and  ask  of  the  Half-King 
a  safe-conduct  to  the  French  post.  He  was  to  deliver  Dinwid- 
dle's letter,  and  make  all  the  observations  he  could  respecting 
the  numbers  of  the  French  and  their  communications  with 
Canada. 


.jihumw 


IIIMIIIIIH 


-  iniifiMm         III 


.2  ■^ 

3  -o 


^o 


U!  _- 


g  H 


306  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

This  undertaking  of  the  young  Virginian  was  trying  in  its 
His  journal  mature,  and  promised  to  be  exhausting  amid  the  rigors 
and  map.  q£  December.  Fortunately,  we  have  the  messenger's 
journal,  which  was  printed  at  Williamsburg  shortly  after  his 
return.  When  reprinted  in  London,  the  next  year,  it  was  ac- 
companied by  a  map,  based  upon  that  of  Bellin,  given  in  Charle- 
voix, at  this  time  nearly  ten  years  old,  but  still  much  better 
than  any  which  the  English  had  yet  produced.  Bellin  had  been 
the  earliest  to  trace  with  approximate  accuracy  the  course  of 
"L'Oio,"  for  it  had  not  been  unusual  —  as  seen,  for  instance, 
in  the  Dutch  maps  of  Vander  Aa  —  to  make  the  Ouabache 
(Wabash)  and  the  Ohio  parallel  streams.  The  course  of  the 
Ohio,  as  given  by  Evans,  had  been  somewhat  changed  by  Gist, 
but  his  corrections  had  not  yet  been  embodied  in  any  of  the 
maps. 

At  Will's  Creek  on  the  Potomac,  November  14,  Washington 
found  Gist,  who  joined  him,  and  two  days  later  the  party  had 
passed  the  divide  and  was  at  the  big  forks  of  the  Youghiogheny. 
A  few  days  afterward,  they  swam  their  horses  over  the  Alle- 
ghany near  its  mouth,  and  hurried  On  to  Logstown.  Here 
Washington  conferred  with  the  Half-King,  and  learned  how 
roughly  that  chief  had  been  treated  by  Marin.  He  also  had 
an  interview  with  some  French  deserters,  who  had  come  up 
from  New  Orleans  on  a  flotilla  with  stores.  He  eagerly  ques- 
tioned them  about  the  French  posts  on  the  Mississippi. 

There  were  a  hundred  miles  yet  to  travel  before  reaching  Le 
Boeuf ;  but  at  V  enanjjo  Washington  got  some  relief 

Venango.  '      .  .  ^         .        ,       *  °. 

from  an  irksome  joui'ney,  m  the  courtesies  which  Jon- 
caire  ofPered  him.  This  assiduous  Frenchman  was  now  occu- 
pying the  house  of  John  Frazier,  a  Scotch  trader  and  gunsmith, 
who  had  lived  here  for  some  years,  but  had  just  been  driven  off 
by  Joncaire's  pai-ty,  the  van  of  the  French  expedition.  Above 
the  cabin  of  the  fugitive,  Joncaire  now  displayed  the  flag  of  the 
Bourbons.  Within,  there  was  a  comfortable  fire  and  a  generous 
board,  and  Joncaire,  as  we  have  seen  in  his  interview  with 
Croghan,  had  all  the  courtesy  which  belonged  to  his  French 
half-breed  nature.  This  and  liberal  potations  induced  mutual 
confidence,  and  before  the  hour  for  parting  came,  Washington 
had  possessed  himself  fully  of  the  purposes  of  the  French. 
That  these  purposes  were  stubborn  Washington  learned  on 


THE   OHIO   COMPANY.  307 

tlie  11th,  when  he  reached  the  fort  at  Le  Boeuf.  Gist  records 
that  they  were  received  "  with  a  great  deal  of  complai- 
sance," for  St.  Pierre  had  all  the  politeness  of  his  race. 
"Washington  presented  Dinwiddie's  letter,  and  three  days  later 
the  French  commander  placed  in  the  young  adjutant's  hands  a 
reply  as  uncompromising  as  a  determined  purpose  could  make 
it.  A  journey  back  more  perilous  than  the  coming  was  before 
the  little  embassy.  By  the  middle  of  January,  1754,  Washing- 
ton was  again  in  Williamsburg. 

Washington's  report  convinced  Dinwiddie  that  there  was  no 
resort  left  but  force.     The  instructions  of  Holderness 
were  timely.     Following  up  the  minister's  advice,  the  become 
Lords  of  Trade  had,  on  September  18,  1753,  coun- 
seled the  colonies  to  aim  at  concerted  action,  and  in  December 
Johnson  told  the  authorities  of  New  York  that  the  Indians  were 
right  in  predicting  French  success  miless  the  English  bestirred 
themselves.     Dinwiddie  acknowledged  that  if  the  French  suc- 
ceeded for  a  while  in  holding  the  Ohio  valley,  they  could  intro- 
duce settlers  to  make  their  hold  effective,  for  a  much   more 
attractive  climate  and  soil  than  Canada  possessed  would  invite 
them  to  the  valley. 

The  Dinwiddie  correspondence  shows  how  expresses  were 
speeding  up  and  down  the  Atlantic  coast  carrying  urgent 
appeals  to  the  other  governors  to  come  to  his  assistance.  The 
several  assemblies,  however,  were  little  inclined  to  commit  them- 
selves to  an  unknown  task,  particularly  as  the  feeling  was  grow- 
ing that  Dinwiddie's  aims  were  rather  political  and  personal 
than  patriotic.  It  was  thought  that  to  advance  the  The  Ohio 
interests  of  the  Ohio  Company  was  not  worth  the  risk  Company. 
of  a  harrowing  border  war.  ContreccEur,  a  little  later,  when 
he  summoned  the  paltry  band  of  English  at  the  forks,  was  not 
unaware  of  this  feeling.  "  Your  schemes,"  he  says  to  the  rep- 
resentatives of  Virginia,  "  are  contrived  only  by  a  company 
which  hath  the  interests  of  trade  more  in  view  than  to  maintain 
the  union  and  harmony  existing  between  the  crowns  of  Great 
Britain  and  France,"  —  and  there  was  truth  in  his  words. 

The  Indians  drew  their  conclusions  from  the  way  in  which 
Virginia  was  pushing  ahead.    Croghan  discovered  that  j^e  urgency 
it  was  believed  among  them  that  the  apathy  of  Penn-  vi*gfuia 
sylvania  was  likely  to  leave  France  and  Virginia  alone  '®^*^'^'"^- 


308  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

to  divide  the  Indian  country  between  them,  and  he  warned  the 
colonial  powers  that  if  they  suffered  the  Shawnees  to  want  for 
ammunition,  the  French  would  surely  gain  them. 

To  Dinwiddie's  mind,  it  was  little  short  of  treason  for  a  Vir- 
ginian to  defend,  as  some  were  doing,  the  French  interpretation 
of  the  rights  of  discovery.  When  his  House  of  Burgesses,  a 
little  later,  proved  obdurate,  and  would  not  grant  him  subsi- 
dies, but  professed  much  loyalty,  he  bitterly  told  them  that  their 
"  ardent  zeal  was  only  an  unavailing  flourish  of  words." 

Either  a  like  defection  or  indifference  prevailed  outside  of 
New  York's  Virginia.  New  York  was  seldom  as  vigilant  as  she 
apathy.  might  bc.  Wlicu  matters  looked  badly  a  year  and 
more  before,  Hendrick,  the  Mohawk  chief,  taunted  her  people 
for  sitting  in  peace  at  Albany,  while  their  Indian  neighbors 
were  pressing  a  common  foe.  It  took  all  of  Johnson's  adroitness 
to  heal  these  sores  of  the  Indians.  "  You  may  rest  contented," 
they  finally  said,  "  that  we  will  protect  the  ti*ee  which  you  have 
replanted,  from  the  high  winds  of  Canada."  Now,  when  De 
Lancey  was  urging  his  assembly  to  stand  by  Virginia,  it  agreed 
to  double  the  garrison  at  Oswego,  and  even  do  something  more, 
but  in  no  wise  to  give  an  adequate  assistance.  It  even  doubted 
whether  the  French  occupation  on  the  Alleghany  was  any  en- 
croachment on  his  majesty's  territory. 

Governor  Glen  of  South  Carolina  was  indifferent  enough  to 
The  feeling  pooh-pooh  at  tlic  iudiguaut  activity  of  the  Virginia 
and'pTnn-''  govcmor,  but  Diuwiddic  rejoiced  that  the  Cherokees 
syivania.  ^^^  Catawbas  wcrc  not  disinclined  to  defend  their 
Ohio  hunting-grounds.  The  governor  of  Pennsylvania  was  not 
without  sympathy ;  but  his  assembly  could  hardly  be  depended 
upon.  The  Proprietary  stood  ready  to  assist  Virginia  in  fortify- 
ing the  forks,  but  he  cautiously  wished  it  to  be  understood  that 
he  did  not  acknowledge  thereby  any  territorial  rights  of  that 
province  about  the  forks. 

It  seemed,  therefore,  if  there  were  to  be  war,  that  it  rested 
with  Dinwiddie  to  begin  it ;  and  he  determined  to  take 

Dinwiddie's        ,  .   ,  ^j  •  i  c  ttt      i  •  i 

warmeas-  the  risk.  It  was  evident  from  Washmgtons  report 
that  the  French  intended  with  the  spring  to  advance 
upon  the  forks,  and  had  gathered  a  large  number  of  canoes 
for  the  purpose.  There  were  also  rumors  that  a  great  body 
of  Chippeways   and  Ottawas  were  on  the  way  to  assist  them. 


WASHINGTON'S  FIRST  CAMPAIGN.  309 

Crosrhan  heard  from  a  Chickasaw  that  the  French  had  a  force 
of  a  thousand  men  gathered  at  the  falls  of  the  Ohio,  and  that 
they  were  prepared  to  give  aid.  French  deserters  re})orted  that 
a  large  contingent  of  French  troops  had  arrived  in  Quebec,  and 
in  January,  1754,  Governor  Hamilton  of  Pennsylvania  was 
passing  the  story  south.  Dinwiddie  felt  that  the  time  was  come. 
The  task  before  him  was  a  burdensome  one,  and  the  home  gov- 
ernment looked  to  hmi  in  the  emei'gency. 

This  Virginia  governor  once  in  a  while  hurt  his  prospects  by 
an  imperious  air.     He  was  occasionally  unstable  :  but 

111  1         •  •  T  1  1        c      1         Dinwiddie 

he  had  enthusiasm,  persistency,  and  a  hatred  or  the  and  his 
French.  These  latter  qualities  got  some  satisfaction 
at  last,  when  he  brought  his  assembly  to  the  pitch  of  voting 
X10,000  for  the  emergency,  and  it  was  induced  to  offer  boun- 
ties of  land  to  those  who  would  come  forward  in  arms.  There- 
fore Dinwiddie  issued  a  proclamation,  agreeing  to  divide  two 
hundred  thousand  acres  of  this  disputed  territory  among  those 
who  would  defend  it.     This  happened  in  February,  1754. 

While  this  was  taking  place  at  Williamsburg,  Trent,  who  had 
been  sent  with  a  fatigue  party  to  the  forks,  placed  the  stockade 
first  post  of  a  stockade  on  the  spot  on  February  17.   f^k""  Feb^^ 
Rumors  that  the  French  were  coming  soon  reached  the  '^^^^^  ^^^* 
little  party,  and  a  messenger  was  dispatched  to  Dinwiddie  for 
help. 

During  March,  Dinwiddie  was  busy  organizing  a  regiment  to 
be  sent  to  occupy  the  fort.  He  placed  it  under  the  Washington 
command  of  Colonel  Fry,  whom  we  have  already  en-  toward  The 
countered  as  a  surveyor,  and  Washington  was  com-  *°'"^^' 
missioned  as  the  lieutenant-colonel.  With  such  companies  as 
were  ready,  Washington  went  forward  to  meet  Trent's  call  for 
assistance. 

We  should  have  esSeellent  material  for  following  this  first 
campaign  of  the  great  Virginian,  and  the  later  ones 
of  the  French  war,  in  his  letters  and  journals,  if  they  ton's  French 
had  come  down  to  us  as  he  wrote  them.  Unfortu- 
nately, such  of  Washington's  letters  of  these  eventful  years  as 
are  derived  from  his  letter-books  were  revised  by  him  at  a  later 
period,  and  in  a  way  to  obscure  the  ardor  and  change  the  natu- 
ral expression  of  the  young  officer,  since  the  wisdom  and  expe- 
rience of  riper  years  was  made  to  overlay  the  spontaneity  of 


310  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

youth.  The  care  which  Washington  took  of  his  papers  showed 
his  appreciation  of  documentary  records,  but  his  stilting  of  the 
unstudied  effusions  of  his  earlier  days  showed  also  his  essential 
lack  of  the  historical  spirit.  It  is  an  added  misfortune  that 
some  of  Washington's  editors  have  further  diminished  the  rep- 
resentative value  of  his  writings.  It  is  a  satisfaction  that  Dr. 
and  early  Toucr  and  othcrs  have  had  a  proper  appreciation  of 
journals.  ^j^g  couditiou  iu  print  which  should  attach  to  a  per- 
sonal document,  and  so  far  as  possible  Washington's  earlier  jour- 
nals are  now  readily  accessible  in  a  satisfactory  shape.  This 
cannot  be  true,  however,  of  the  itinerary  which  he  kept  during 
the  venturesome  experiences  of  the  summer  and  autumn  of 
1754.  This  journal,  falling  into  the  enemy's  hands,  was  pub- 
lished in  Paris  in  a  French  version,  and  later  re-Englished  by 
another  hand.  It  was  thus  subjected  to  changes,  omissions,  and 
insertions  which,  by  Washington's  own  testimony,  largely  in- 
validate it  as  evidence.  It  is  in  these  perverted  forms  only  that 
we  have  it. 

When  Washington  started  out  in  March,  1754,  Dinwiddle  was 
Dinwiddle's  Urging  the  authorities  of  New  York  and  Massachusetts 
hopes.  ^Q  organize  a  counter  movement  against  Canada,  in 

order  to  prevent  the  sending  of  reinforcements  to  the  Ohio. 
The  appeal,  however,  was  not  heeded,  though  in  April  Dinwid- 
dle was  hopeful  that  a  diversion  would  be  made  by  way  of  the 
Kennebec.    Thus  Washington's  party  was  left  to  its  own  devices. 

"  It  will  be  easier  to  prevent  the  French  settling  than  to 
dislodge  them  when  settled,"  wrote  Dinwiddle  to  Sharpe  of 
Maryland  ;  and  this  was  the  task  in  hand.  It  was  no  small 
one  if  the  stories  of  French  deserters,  which  were  being  sent 
south  from  Philadelphia,  were  true.  One  such  represented  that 
there  were  twelve  hundred  in  garrison  at  Presqu'  Isle,  and  five 
hundred  at  Le  Boeuf. 

On  April  9,  Washington  met  an  express  from  the  forks, 
informing  him  that  the  force  there  was  in  hourly 
capwred'by  expectation  of  an  attack  from  eight  hundred  French. 
Eleven  days  later,  reports  reached  him  (April  20) 
that  the  French  had  captured  the  unfinished  fort.  Washington 
was  at  Will's  Creek  on  the  22d,  when  Ensign  Ward,  who  had 
surrendered  the  works,  appeared  and  told  his  story. 


THE   FORKS   OF  THE   OHIO.  311 

The  French  from  Le  Boeuf  had  passed  Venango,  where 
Washington  had  seen  Joncaire,  and  where,  near  Fra-  p^rt 
zier's  house,  the  French  had  built  a  fort  during  the  M»«i>=»"it- 
winter,  which  had  been  named  Fort  Machault,  in  honor  of  one 
of  the  favorites  of  the  Pompadour.  It  was  situated  within  the 
limits  of  the  modern  town  of  Franklin  in  Pennsylvania.  De- 
scending the  Alleghany,  Contrecoeur,  who  commanded  the 
detachment,  had  appeared  before  the  English  at  the  forks. 

Trent,  the  commander  of  the  post,  in  terror  or  bewilderment, 
had  gone  away,  and  his  lieutenant  had  also  left  his  post  to  see 
his  family,  living  not  far  distant.     This  gave  the  command  of 
the  working  party  to  Ensign  Ward.     When  the  French  leader 
demanded  his  surrender,  the  ensign,  at  the  Half-King's  sugges- 
tion, pleaded  his  inferior  rank,  and  asked  that  a  reply  might  be 
delayed  till  the  return  of  his  superior  officers.    The  plea  was  fu- 
tile.     Ward  could  but  surrender,  and  now,  five  days  ward's 
later,  —  the  surrender  having  been  made  on  the  17th,   Ap^i  n^*^' 
—  Washington  was  listening  to  the  terms  by  which  the   ^^^*' 
fort  and  a  score  or  two  of  men  passed  into  Contrecoeur's  hands. 
The  prisoners  had  been  allowed  by  him  to  depart. 

There  is  no  indisputable  enumeration  of  the  attacking  force, 
except  that  they  had  eighteen  small  cannon.  It  was  beyond 
question  very  greatly  superior  to  Ward's.  The  hour  was  cer- 
tainly passed  for  succor,  but  Washington  knew  that  he  was  ex- 
pected to  prove  his  mettle.  He  sent  forward  a  party  to  repair 
the  road  which  Cresap  had  blazed  over  the  mountains  Washington 
to  the  Ked  Stone  Creek  on  the  Monongahela,  where  ^'^^^nces. 
the  Ohio  Company  had  recently  erected  a  storehouse.  Thus 
was  made  what  was  really  the  first  wagon  road  into  the  Great 
Valley,  from  the  Atlantic  slope.  It  was  later  used  in  part  by 
Braddock,  and  continued  to  be  a  thoroughfare  till  1818,  when 
the  National  Road  was  constructed  in  the  same  general  direction. 
The  line  of  the  original  highway  can  still  be  traced,  or  was  to 
be  traced,  as  late  as  1877,  when  Lowdermilk,  the  local  historian, 
followed  it. 

On  April  29,  Washington  started  from  Will's  Creek  with  his 
main  body  of  one  himdred  and  fifty  men.  On  May  9,  he  was 
at  Little  Meadows,  on  a  tributary  of  the  Youghiogheny.  This 
was  well  within  the  valley,  and  at  a  later  day  was  part  of  a 
property  which  Washington  acquired.     Here  he  erected  some 


312  UNDECLARED   WAR. 

slight  protection  for  his  supplies.  Three  days  later,  he  met  Gist, 
who  told  him  he  had  seen  tracks  of  a  French  force  thereabouts. 
The  Indian  Half-King,  who  was  hovering  in  the  neighborhood, 
sent  word  to  Washington  that  a  French  party  lay  concealed  not 
far  off,  —  a  force  under  Jumonville,  which  Contrecoeur  had  sent 
out  three  days  before  to  patrol  the  country  and  warn  off  any 
English  to  be  found,  Washington  and  the  Indian  chief  now 
jumonvuie  Diet,  and  on  consultation  it  was  determined  to  attack 
attacked.  ^^  Frcuch.  The  Virginian  commander  had  at  this 
time  no  knowledge  of  the  purpose  of  Jumonville,  and  after 
Washington's  impetuosity  the  following  day  led  him  to  an  as- 
sault, in  which  the  French  leader  was  killed  and  most  of  his 
thirty-three  followers  were  slain  or  captured,  the  English  com- 
mander was  put  to  some  awkwardness  in  justifying  his  action. 
Jumonville  had  started  out  with  a  large  force,  but  a  part  had 
been  sent  back  to  Duquesne,  as  Contrecoeur  now  called  the 
fort  at  the  forks.  It  was  the  tracks  of  this  returning  force 
which  Gist  had  observed.  On  Jumonville's  person  was  found 
a  summons  which  he  was  instructed  to  serve  on  any  English 
he  might  meet.  In  this  summons  Contrecoeur  said  to  whoever 
should  receive  it  that  "  the  sale  of  lands  on  the  Ohio  River  by 
the  Indians  has  given  you  so  weak  a  title  that  I  shall  be  obliged 
to  repel  force  by  force."  It  proved  that  Washington  in  at- 
tacking had  only  anticipated  an  assault  from  Jumonville,  who 
was  simply  waiting  reinforcements.  Two  days  later,  Washing- 
ton (May  30)  dispatched  his  prisoners  to  Winchester,  and 
fearing  a  retaliatory  attack  from  Contrecoeur,  who  is  supposed 
to  have  had  not  far  from  a  thousand  men  at  his  disposal, 
began  to  intrench.  He  was  conscious  that,  in  case  of  a  parley, 
he  was  not  well  equipped  in  an  interpreter,  and  in  a  few  days 
wrote  to  Dinwiddie,  asking  that  Andrew  Montour  might  be 
Washington  ^cut  to  him.  Armed  supports  began  to  reach  him, 
supreme  ^^^^  aftcr  a  wliilc  lic  learned  of  the  death  of  Colonel 
command.  Fry,  wlio  was  ou  his  way  to  join  the  advance  body. 
This  gave  the  supreme  command  to  Washington. 

Note.  The  map  on  the  opposite  page  is  from  Fry  and  Jefferson's  Map  of  Virginia,  showing 
Lord  Fairfax's  manor,  the  dotted  line  running  southeast  from  the  "Springhead"  of  the  North 
Fork  of  the  Potomac  giving  the  direction  of  the  southern  boundary  of  the  manor,  toward  the 
Shenandoah  valley.  Tlie  "  Springhead  "  is  shown  as  contiguous  to  the  source  of  the  Mononga- 
hela.  The  road  from  Fort  Necessity  (on  Red  Stone  Creek,  a  branch  of  the  Monongaliela)  runs  to 
the  fort  and  storehouse  at  the  moutli  of  Will's  Creek.  Farther  down  the  Potomac,  near  the 
mouth  of  the  South  Fork,  is  Colonel  Cresap's  settlement.  Christopher  Gist's  abode  is  in  the  north- 
west corner  of  the  map,  on  the  road  from  Will's  Creek  to  the  forks  of  the  Ohio. 


314  UNDECLARED    WAR. 

While  the  intrenching  was  going  on,  rumors  came  of  an  ap- 
proaching foe.  At  the  same  time  about  forty  Indians  gathered 
in  the  camj),  including,  beside  some  Iroquois,  a  number  of  Loups 
(Delawares)  and  Shawnees.  Washington  had  every  reason  to 
believe  that  some  of  these  were  spies.  He  tried  to  deceive  such 
in  his  representations,  and  on  the  27th  he  made  his  last  entries 
in  the  journal  whose  history  we  have  traced. 

In  1752,  Gist,  as  the  result  of  his  explorations  for  the  Ohio 
Company,  had  begun  a  settlement  ten  miles  from  the  Monon- 
gahela,  on  what  is  now  Mount  Braddock,  in  Fayette  County, 
Pennsylvania.  Here,  on  June  28,  Gist  gave  Washington  the 
first  explicit  information  he  had  had  of  a  French  force  marching 
against  him.  The  Virginian  at  first  resolved  to  concentrate  his 
men  here  and  await  an  attack ;  but  his  second  thoughts  prompted 
him  to  fall  back  to  Great  Meadows  and  strengthen  the  breast- 
work which  he  had  already  begun  at  that  place.  He  had  but  two 
wagons  and  a  few  pack-horses  to  carry  his  intrenching  tools, 
but  he  could  trundle  on  their  own  wheels  his  nine  small  swivel 
four-pounders.  The  distance  back  to  Fort  Necessity,  as  this 
intrenchment  was  called,  was  thirteen  miles,  and  in  his  advance, 
Washington  clearing  the  road  as  he  went,  he  had  taken  as  many 
to*Fort^  days.  He  now  occupied  but  two  days  on  the  return 
Necessity,  march,  but  his  men  were  almost  overcome  by  the  work. 
His  supplies  were  scant,  and  even  the  expresses  he  sent  back 
for  relief  made  a  welcome  diminution  of  the  mouths  he  had  to 
feed.  He  had,  perhaps,  three  hundred  men  in  all,  not  counting 
a  Carolina  company  which  had  joined  him.  Contrecoeur's 
whole  force  by  this  time  had  increased  to  about  two  thousand, 
and  of  these  a  party  of  some  six  or  eight  hundred  was  now  ap- 
proaching. 

The  usual  story  is,  that  the  Chevalier  de  Villiers,  a  brother 
of  Jumonville,  was  at  Fort  Chartres,  on  the  Mississippi,  when 
word  reached  him  of  the  death  of  his  brother.  The  time  was 
certainly  scant  for  the  news  to  traverse  the  length  of  the  Ohio 
and  the  avenger  of  Jumonville  to  return ;  and  it  is  much  more 
likely,  as  better  authorities  say,  that  the  tidings  found  him  in 
Montreal.  At  all  events,  Villiers  reached  Duquesne  on  June  16, 
and  learned  that  Contrecoeur  had  organized  a  force  to  attack 
Washington.  In  a  day  or  two  it  started  under  Villiers's  com- 
mand. 


WASHINGTON  SURRENDERS.  315 

About  eleven  o'clock  in  the  forenoon  of  July  3,  1754,  Wash- 
ington, at  Fort  Necessity,  saw  the  enemy  advancing 
through  the  mist,  along  the  road  which  he  had  so  attack, 
laboriously  made.  The  Virginians  opened  upon  the 
foe  at  long  range,  with  their  little  swivels,  but  without  much 
effect.  The  Half -King,  who  was  in  the  fort,  was  dissatisfied. 
He  thought  that  Washington  had  not  sufficiently  intrenched 
himself,  and  that  had  he  more  effectively  barricaded  his  force, 
he  might  have  held  out.  The  opposing  force  was  certainly 
much  larger  than  Washington's  command,  though  perhaps  not 
twelve  hundred  or  even  a  thousand,  as  some  testimony  makes  it. 
Adam  Stephens's  narrative  gives  Washington  but  two  hundred 
and  eighty-four  men,  and  they  were  probably  much  less  fresh 
than  the  French.  The  little  fort  is  described  as  being  "  half 
leg  deep  of  mud."  Desultory  firing  was  kept  up  the  rest  of 
the  day,  through  a  dismal  rain,  vmtil  in  the  evening  Villiers 
sent  an  officer  to  demand  a  parley.  The  Virginians  by  this 
time  had  lost  in  killed  and  woimded  about  eighty.  Washing- 
ton now  had  sore  need  of  an  interpreter  like  Montour.  There 
was  in  his  force  a  German,  Jacob  van  Braam,  who  knew  little 
English  and  no  more  French.  It  had  become  evident  that 
Washington  coidd  not  successfidly  repel  an  assaidt,  and  he  de- 
cided to  obtain  the  best  terms  he  could.  By  the  light  of  a 
tallow  candle  in  the  misty  rain,  Van  Braam  and  the  French 
came  to  an  agreement  under  Washington's  directions.  The 
terms  secured  for  the  vanquished  the  honors  of  war,  the  destruc- 
tion instead  of  the  surrender  of  the  swivels,  and  the  giving  of 
hostages  for  the  return  of  the  prisoners  taken  in  the  fight  with 
Jumonville,  —  a  provision  that  Dinwiddie  stubbornly  refused  to 
carry  out. 

On  July  4,  1754,  Washington   and  his  little  army  marched 
out  of  his  breastworks,  and  five  days  later  the  Virgin- 

/-^         1  r\  ^        n  A    ^         i  Washington 

lans  were  at  Will  s  Creek.     On  the  24th,  the  news  surrenders, 
.  1      mi  T  1  July- 17^- 

was  known  in  Montreal,      ihus  were  the   northeast- 
ern tributaries  of  the  Great  Valley  abandoned  by  the  English. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE   RIVAL   CLAIMANTS    FOR   NORTH   AMERICA. 
1497-1755. 

In  considering  the  respective  claims  of  the  English  and 
French  to  North  America,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  con- 
flict of  rights  is  not  only  one  on  identical  lines  arising  from 
discovery,  but  one  also  on  opposed  lines  arising  from  different 
conceptions  of  the  rights  of  discovery.  The  claims  are  also 
represented  by  contrary  methods  and  purposes  in  enforcing 
them. 

The  French,  in  the  time  of  Francis  I.  and  later,  claimed  the 
new  continent  by  reason  of  Verrazano's  voyage  along  its  Atlan- 
tic coast.  The  claim,  however,  was  not  made  good  by  perma- 
nent occupation  anywhere  along  the  seaboard  of  the  present 
United  States. 

Moreover,  the  English,  under  the  Cabots,  had  sailed  along 
this  coast  nearly  thirty  years  before.  Still,  it  was  almost  a  cen- 
tury after  those  voyagers  before  the  English  government,  urged 
by  the  spirit  which  Hakluyt  and  Dr.  Dee  were  fostering,  awoke 
to  the  opportunity,  and  began  seriously  to  base  rights  upon  the 
Cabot  voyages.  The  French,  at  a  later  day,  sought  to  discredit 
this  English  claim,  on  the  ground  that  the  Cabots  were  private 
adventurers  and  could  establish  no  national  pretensions.  The 
English  pointedly  replied  that  their  Henry  VII.  had  given  the 
Cabots  patents  which  reserved  to  the  crown  dominion  over  any 
lands  which  were  discovered.  This  reply  was  triumphant  so 
far  as  it  went,  but  it  still  left  the  question  aside,  whether 

The  French  ,.  ■     -i       •    i  ,         j         ,i         -j^- 

and  EngUsh  coast  discovery  carried  rights  to  the  interior,  par- 
ticularly if  such  inland  regions  drained  to  another 
sea.  The  English  attempt  in  the  latter  part  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  under  Raleigh's  influence,  to  occupy  Roanoke  Island 
and  adjacent  regions,  but  without  definite  extension  westward, 


PHYSIOGRAPHY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  317 

was  in  due  time  followed  by  successive  royal  patents  and  char- 
ters, beginning  in  1606  and  ending  in  1665,  which  ajipropriated 
the  hospitable  parts  of  the  continent  stretching  from  the  Atlan- 
tic to  the  Pacific.  For  a  north  and  south  extension  these  grants 
ahnost  exactly  covered  the  whole  length  of  the  Mississippi, 
since  the  parallel  of  48°,  which  formed  the  northern  limit, 
and  that  of  29°,  which  made  the  southern,  were  respectively  a 
little  north  of  the  source  of  the  Great  River  and  just  seaward 
of  its  deltas. 

The  charter  of  Acadia,  granted  by  the  French  king  three 
years  before  the  first  of  the  English  grants,  covered  the  coast 
from  latitude  40°  to  46°,  and  was  thus  embraced  in  the  preten- 
sions of  the  English  king,  but  his  rival  refrained  from  giving 
any  westward  extension,  beyond  what  was  implied  in  "  the 
lands,  shores,  and  countries  of  Acadia  and  other  neighboring 
lands." 

It  is  interesting  to  determine  what,  during  this  period  of 
sixty  years,  mainly  in  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
were  the  notions,  shared  by  the  English  king  and  his  advisers, 
of  the  extent  of  this  munificent  domain,  with  which  he  and  they 
were  so  free. 

A  few  years  before  the  first  of  these  grants  was  made  to  the 
Plymouth  Company  in  1606,  Hakluyt  had  laid  before  supposed 
the  world,  in  Molineaux's  great  mappemonde,  the  North  Imer- 
ripest  English  ideas  of  the  New  World,  and  these  gave  "^*' 
a  breadth  to  North  America  not  much  different  from  what  it 
was  in  reality.  The  Pacific  coast  line,  however,  was  not  car- 
ried above  Drake's  New  Albion,  our  modern  Upper  California. 
This  left  the  question  still  undetermined,  if  one  could  not  travel 
on  a  higher  parallel  dryshod  to  Asia,  as  Thomas  Morton,  later 
a  settler  on  Boston  Bay,  imagined  he  could. 

Molineaux  gives  no  conception  of  the  physical  distribution  of 
mountain  and  valley  in  this  vast  area,  further  than  to  bulk  the 
Great  Lakes  into  a  single  inland  sea.  The  notion  of  an  immense 
interior  valley,  corresponding  in  some  extent  to  our  Mississippi 
basin,  which  Mercator  forty  years  before  had  divined,  had  not 
yet  impressed  the  British  mind.  Mercator,  indeed,  had  mis- 
conceived it,  in  that  he  joined  the  Mississippi  and  St.  Law- 
rence basins  together  by  obliterating  the  divide  between  them. 
In  this  way  he  made  his  great  continental  river  rise  in  Arizona 


318     THE  RIVAL    CLAIMANTS   FOR   NORTH   AMERICA. 

and  sweep  northeast,  and  join  the  great  current  speeding  to  the 
Gulf  o£  St.  Lawrence,  Here,  then,  in  the  adequate  breadth  of 
the  continent,  as  Mercator  and  Molineaux  drew  it,  is  conclusive 
evidence  that  the  royal  giver  of  these  vast  areas  had,  or  could 
have  had,  something  like  a  proper  notion  of  the  extent  of  his 
munificent  gifts.  At  the  date  of  the  last  of  these  charters,  in 
1665,  Cartier  and  his  successors  had  for  a  hundred  and  thirty 
years  been  endeavoring  to  measure  the  breadth  of  the  continent 
by  the  way  of  the  St.  Lawrence  an^  the  Great  Lakes.  They 
sought  to  prove  by  inland  routes  whether  the  estimated  longi- 
tude of  New  Albion  had  been  accurate  or  not.  There  had,  it 
is  true,  been  some  vacillation  of  belief  meanwhile.  One  thing 
had  been  accomplished  to  clarify  the  notions  respecting  these 
great  interior  spaces.  The  belief  of  Mercator  had  given  way  to 
the  expectation  of  finding  a  large  river,  flowing  in  a  southerly 
direction,  whose  springs  were  separated  from  those  of  the  St. 
Lawrence  by  a  dividing  ridge.  It  was  not  yet  determined 
where  the  outlet  of  this  great  river  was.  Was  it  on  the  Atlan- 
tic side  of  Florida,  as  a  long  stretch  up  the  coast  from  the 
peninsula  was  at  that  time  called?  "Was  it  in  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  identifying  it  with  the  stream  in  which  De  Soto  had 
been  buried  ?  Was  it  in  the  Gulf  of  California,  making  it  an 
extension  of  the  Colorado  River  ?  Each  of  these  views  had  its 
advocates  among  the  French,  who  had  already  learned  something 
of  the  upper  reaches  of  both  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi.  It  was 
left  for  Joliet  and  Marquette,  a  few  years  later,  not  to  discover 
the  Mississippi,  but  to  reach  the  truth  of  its  flow,  and  for  La 
Salle  to  confirm  it. 

These  latter  explorations  of  the  priest  and  trader  gave  the 
The  Missis-  Frcnch  such  rights  as  came  from  traversing  through- 
Bippi  valley.  ^^^  ^.j^g  water- ways  which  led  with  slight  interruption 
from  the  water  back  of  Newfoundland  to  the  Mexican  gulf.  In 
due  time  this  Immense  valley  of  the  Mississippi  was  entered  by 
the  British  traders,  as  they  discovered  pass  after  pass  through 
the  mountain  barrier  all  the  way  from  New  York  to  Carolina. 
The  French,  indeed,  had  permanent  settlements  among  the  Illi- 
nois and  on  the  lower  Mississippi,  but  In  other  parts  of  the 
Great  Valley  there  Is  little  doubt  that  wandering  Britons  were 
quite  as  familiar  to  the  Indians  as  the  French  trader  or  adven- 
turer.    If  the  evidence  is  not  to  be  disputed,  there  was  among 


THEIR   CLAIMS  FORMULATED.  319 

these  hardy  British  adventurers  a  certain  John  Howard,  who 
was,  perhaps,  the  first,  on  the  English  part,  to  travel  the  whole 
course  of  one  of  the  great  ramifications  of  the  valley.  It  was 
in  1742  that  he  passed  from  the  upper  waters  of  the  James  over 
the  mountains  to  New  Eiver,  by  which  he  reached  the  Ohio, 
Descending  this  main  affluent,  he  was  floating  down  the  Missis- 
sippi itself  when  he  was  captured  by  some  French  and  Indians 
and  conveyed  to  New  Orleans.  An  air  of  circumstantiality  is 
given  to  the  expedition  in  the  journal  of  John  Peter  Salley, 
who  was  one  of  Howard's  companions.  Fry,  in  his  report  to 
the  Ohio  Company  at  a  later  day,  made  something  of  this  ex- 
ploit as  crediting  the  English  with  an  early  acquaintance  with 
the  Great  Valley.  The  most  western  settlements  of  the  Vir- 
ginians are  marked  in  Evans's  map  of  1755  as  that  of  J. 
Keeney  at  the  junction  of  Greenbrier  and  New  rivers,  and 
Stahlmaker's  house  on  the  middle  fork  of  the  Holston  River. 
These  isolated  outposts  of  the  English  were  an  exception  to 
their  habit  of  making  one  settlement  support  another.  The 
English  alleged,  as  set  forth  by  Mitchell,  that  the  French 
planted  their  posts  "  straggling  up  and  down  in  remote  and 
uncultivated  deserts,  in  order  thereby  to  seem  to  occupy  a  greater 
extent  of  territory,  while  in  effect  they  hardly  occupy  any  at 
aU." 

The  claims,  then,  of  these  rival  contestants  for  the  trans-Alle- 
ghany  region,  as  they  respectively  advanced  them  at  the  time, 
may  be  thus  put :  — 

The  English  pretended  to  have  secured  their  rights  by  a  west-^ 
ward  extension  from  the  regions  of  their  coast  occu- 
pation, and  down  to  1763  they  stubbornly  maintained  the  rival 
this  claim,  though  forced  to   strengthen  it,  first,  by 
alleging  certain  sporadic,  and  sometimes  doubtful  and  even  dis- 
proved, wanderings  of  their  people  beyond  the  mountains ;  and 
second,  by  deriving  an   additional  advantage    from   professed 
rights  ceded  to  them  by  the  Iroquois.  / 

When  the  main  grants  to  the  Plymouth  and  London  com- 

NoTE.  The  following  map  is  from  the  3Iemoires  des  Commissaires  du  Roi,  etc.,  Paris,  1757, 
and  represents  what  the  French  understood  to  be  the  pretensions  of  the  English  sea-to-sea  cliar- 
ters.  The  heavy  black  lines  indicate  the  north  and  south  limits  of  Virginia  and  New  England 
(1620) ;  the  heavy  dots  the  1662  charter  of  Carolina ;  the  lighter  dots  the  extended  Carolina 
charter  of  1665  ;  and  the  fine  parallel  lines  the  Georgia  charter  of  1732.  The  map  also  shows  the 
supposed  connection  of  the  Mississippi  and  Lake  Winnipeg. 


322     THE  RIVAL    CLAIMANTS  FOR   NORTH  AMERICA. 

panies  were  suj)ersedecl  by  less  extensive  allotments,  this  same 
sea-to-sea  extension  was  constantly  reinforced  as  far  as  itera- 
tion could  do  it.  The  provincial  charter  of  Massachusetts,  for 
instance,  in  confirming  the  earlier  bounds,  carried  her  limits 
west  toward  the  South  Sea.  That  of  Virginia  did  the  same, 
but  with  so  clumsy  a  definition  that  the  claims  of  Massachusetts 
and  Virginia  collided  in  the  Ohio  valley  and  beyond. 

The  Congress  at  Albany,  in  1754,  reaffirmed  this  westward 
extension,  but  allowed  that  it  had  been  modified  north  of  the 
St.  Lawrence  only  by  concession  to  Canada  under  the  treaty  of 
Utrecht  in  1713.  A  similar  ground  was  assumed  by  Shirley  at 
Paris,  in  1755,  when  he  met  the  French  commissioners  in  an 
endeavor  to  reconcile  their  respective  claims. 

The  French,  on  the  contrary,  derived  their  rights,  in  their 
opinion,  from  having  been  the  first  to  traverse  the  Great  Valley, 
and  because  they  had  made  settlements  at  a  few  points ;  and 
still  more  because  they  possessed  and  had  settled  a.bout  the 
mouth  of  the  Great  River.  It  was  their  contention  that  such  a 
possession  of  the  mouth  of  a  main  stream  gave  them  jurisdic- 
tion over  its  entire  water-shed  in  the  interior,  just  as  their  pos- 
session of  the  outlet  of  the  St.  Lawrence  gave  to  France  the 
control  of  its  entire  basin.  Upon  this  principle,  Louis  XIV. 
had  made  his  concession  to  Crozat  for  monoijolizing  the  trade 
of  the  Great  VaUey. 

These  two  grounds  of  national  rights,  the  one  arising  from  the 
possession  of  the  coast  and  the  other  from  occuj)ation  of  a  river 
mouth,  were  consequently  at  variance  with  each  other.  They 
were  both  in  themselves  preposterous,  in  the  opinions  of  adver- 
saries, and  both  claimants  were  forced  to  abate  their  preten- 
sions. The  English  eventually  conceded  to  France  all  west  of 
the  Mississippi.  France  by  the  arbitrament  of  war  yielded,  to 
one  people  or  another,  the  water-sheds  of  both  the  Mississippi 
and  the  St.  Lawrence,  just  as  the  United  States  at  a  later  day, 
making  a  like  claim  for  the  entire  valley  of  the  Columbia  Eiver 
through  the  discovery  of  its  mouth,  were  forced  to  be  content 
with  but  a  portion  of  their  demand. 

There  was  another  difference  in  the  claims  of  the  two  con- 
testants which  particularly  affected  their  respective  relations 
with  the  original  occupants  of  the  Great  VaUey. 


RELATIONS    WITH   THE  INDIANS.  323 

The  French  asserted  possession  against  the  heathen,  but 
cared  little  for  the  territory  except  to  preserve  it  for  pgg  ^^^ 
the  fur  trade.  They  were  not,  consequently,  despoil-  3""8diction. 
ers  of  the  savages'  himting-grounds.  One  to  three  square  miles 
was  estimated  as  each  Indian's  requirement  for  the  chase.  But, 
nevertheless,  they  seized  such  points  as  they  wished,  without 
thought  of  recompensing  the  savage  owners.  This  prerogative 
of  free  appropriation  the  French  persistently  guarded.  When, 
in  1751,  La  Jonquiere  told  the  tribes  on  the  Ohio  that  the 
French  would  not  occupy  their  lands  without  their  permission, 
he  was  rebuked  by  his  home  government,  and  Duquesne,  his 
successor,  was  enjoined  to  imdo  the  impression  which  La  Jon- 
quiere had  conveyed  to  the  savages. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  English  pioneers,  by  their  charters 
and  patents,  got  a  jurisdiction  over,  but  not  a  fee  in,  the  lands 
conveyed.  In  the  practice  which  England  established,  or  pro- 
fessed to  establish,  occupation  could  follow  only  upon  the  extin- 
guishment by  purchase  or  treaty  of  the  native  title. 

Thus  the  Indian  had  exemj^lified  to  him,  by  these  intruders, 
two  diverse  policies.  He  was  inclined  to  the  French  ^he  Indians 
policy  because  it  did  not  disturb  his  life,  and  drive  him  rivli*pou- 
away  from  his  ancestral  hunting-grounds.  Duquesne  *^"^^' 
was  wont  to  tell  the  Indians  that  the  French  placing  a  fort  on 
the  tribe's  lands  did  not  mean  the  felling  of  forest  and  planting 
of  fields,  as  it  did  with  the  English  ;  but  that  the  French  fort 
became  only  a  convenient  hunting-lodge  for  the  Indian,  with 
undisturbed  game  about  it. 

The  Indian  was  inclined  to  the  English  policy  because  it 
showed  a  recognition  of  his  right  to  the  soil,  for  which  he  could 
get  cloth  and  trinkets  and  rum,  if  he  chose  to  sell  it.  But  he 
soon  found  that  the  clothes  which  he  obtained  wore  out,  the 
liquor  was  gone,  and  the  baubles  were  worthless.  The  trans- 
action, forced  upon  him  quite  as  often  as  voluntarily  assumed, 
was  almost  sure  to  leave  him  for  a  heritage  a  contiguous  settle- 
ment of  farmholders,  who  felled  the  forests  and  drove  away  his 
buffalo. 

The  savage  was  naturally  much  perplexed,  between  these  rival 
methods,  in  determining  which  was  most  for  his  advantage. 
Accordingly,  we  find  the  aboriginal  hordes  over  vast  regions 


324     THE  RIVAL    CLAIMANTS  FOR  NORTH  AMERICA. 

divided  in  allegiance,  some  pref  ei-ring  tlie  Fi-encli  and  others  the 
English,  and  neither  part  by  any  means  constant  to  one  side 
or  the  other. 

Moreover,  these  two  diverse  policies  meant  a  good  deal  to 
such  disputants  in  the  trial  of  strength  between  them.  The 
French  knew  they  were  greatly  inferior  in  numbers,  but  they 
counted  on  a  better  organization  and  a  single  responsible  head, 
which  induced  celerity  of  movement,  and  this  went  a  great 
way  in  overcoming  their  rival's  weight  of  numbers.  Joncaire 
boasted  of  this  to  Washington,  when  as  a  Virginian  messenger 
he  went  to  carry  the  warning  of  Dinwiddle.  Pownall  under- 
stood it,  when  he  said  that  Canada  did  not  consist  of  farms  and 
settlements,  as  the  English  colonies  did,  but  of  forts  and  soldiers. 
"  The  English  cannot  settle  and  fight  too,"  he  adds.  "  They 
can  fight  as  well  as  the  French,  but  they  must  give  over  set- 
tling." Thus  the  two  people,  seeking  to  make  the  New  World 
tributary  to  the  Old,  sought  to  help  their  rival  claims  by  gain- 
ing over  these  native  arbiters.  It  was  soon  seen  that  success 
for  the  one  side  or  the  other  depended  largely  on  holding  the 
Indians  fast  in  allegiance. 

The  savage  is  always  impressed  by  prowess.  For  many  years, 
the  French  claimed  his  admiration  through  their  military  suc- 
cess, and  the  English  often  lost  it  by  lack  of  such  success.  In 
personal  dealing  with  the  Indian,  the  French  always  had  the 
advantage.  They  were  better  masters  of  wiles.  They  knew 
better  how  to  mould  the  savage  passions  to  their  own  purposes. 
With  it  all,  they  were  always  tactful,  which  the  English  were 
far  from  being.  William  Johnson,  the  astutest  manager  of  the 
Indians  the  English  ever  had,  knew  this  thoroughly,  and  per- 
sistently tried  to  teach  his  countrymen  the  virtue  of  tact.  It 
was  not  unrecognized  among  his  contemporaries  that  Johnson's 
alliance  with  a  sister  of  Brant,  a  Mohawk  chief,  had  much  to  do 
with  his  influence  among  the  Iroquois. 

"  General  Johnson's  success,"  wrote  Peter  Fontaine,  "  was 
owing  under  God  to  his  fidelity  to  the  Indians  and  his  generous 
conduct  to  his  Indian  wife,  by  whom  he  hath  several  hopefid 
sons,  who  are  all  war  captains,  the  bulwark  with  him  of  the  Five 
Nations,  and  loyal  subjects  to  their  another  country."  This 
Huguenot,  Fontaine,  traced  much  of  the  misery  of  frontier  life 
to  the  failure  of  the  English  to  emulate  the  French  in  intermar- 


THE  IROQUOIS.  325 

rying  with  the  natives,  and  he,  curiously  rather  than  accurately, 
refers  the  absence  of  the  custom  to  an  early  incident  in  Vir- 
ginia history ;  "  for  when  our  wise  politicians  heard  that  Kolfe 
had  married  Pocahontas,  it  was  deliberated  in  council  whether 
he  had  not  committed  high  treason  by  marrying  an  Indian 
princess  ;  and  had  not  some  troubles  intervened  which  put  a 
stop  to  the  inquiry,  the  poor  man  might  have  been  hanged  up 
for  doing  the  most  just,  the  most  natural,  the  most  generous  and 
politic  action  that  ever  was  done  this  side  of  the  water.  This 
put  an  effectual  stop  to  all  intermarriages  afterwards." 

Both  French  and  English  were  not  slow  in  discovering  that 
among  the  American  tribes  the  Iroquois  were  the  chief  The 
arbiters  of  savage  destiny  in  North  America.  The  ^'^*«i"°'^- 
struggle  of  each  rival  was  to  secure  the  help  of  these  doughty 
confederates.  In  the  early  years  of  the  European  occupation, 
the  Dutch  j)ropitiated  the  Iroquois  and  the  French  provoked 
them.  The  English  succeeded  to  the  policy  of  the  Hollanders, 
and  the  French  long  felt  the  enmity  which  Champlain  had  en- 
gendered. The  Dutch  and  English  could  give  more  and  better 
merchandise  for  a  beaver-skin,  and  this  told  in  the  rivalry,  not 
only  for  the  friendship  of  the  Iroquois,  but  for  that  of  other 
and  more  distant  tribes.  This  was  a  decided  gain  to  the  Eng- 
lish and  as  decided  a  loss  to  the  French,  and  no  one  knew  it 
better  than  the  losing  party. 

Throughout  the  dire  struggle,  the  English  never  ceased  for 
any  long  period  to  keep  substantial  hold  of  the  Iroquois. 
There  were  defections.  Some  portions  of  the  Oneidas  and  Mo- 
hawks were  gained  by  the  Jesuits,  who  settled  their  neophytes 
near  Montreal.  The  Senecas  were  much  inclined  to  be  inde- 
pendent, and  the  French  possession  of  Niagara  and  the  arts  of 
Joncaire  helped  their  uncertainty.  Every  tribe  of  the  United 
Council  at  Onondaga  had  times  of  indecision.  But,  on  the 
whole,  the  English  were  conspicuously  helped  by  the  Iroquois 
allegiance,  and  they  early  used  it  to  give  new  force  to  their 
claim  for  a  westward  extension.  The  country  which  the  Iro- 
quois originally  occupied  was  that  portion  of  the  State  of  New 
York  south  of  its  great  lake,  and  their  tribes  were  scattered 
through  the  valley  of  the  Mohawk,  along  the  water-shed  of  On- 
tario, and  throughout  the  country  holding  the  springs  of  the 


326     THE  RIVAL    CLAIMANTS   FOR   NORTH  AMERICA. 

Susquehanna  and  the  Alleghany.  From  the  days  of  John 
Smith,  the  Susquehanna  had  been  an  inviting  entrance  to  the 
interior  from  the  Chesapeake,  and  Champlain's  deputy,  in 
1615,  had  found  that  it  afforded  a  route  to  the  sea  from  the 
Iroquois  country. 

It  was  a  dispute  between  the  French  and  the  English  which 
of  the  two  peoples  first  penetrated  this  Iroquois  country.  La 
Jonquiere,  in  1751,  claimed  the  priority  for  the  French.  There 
can  be  little  question,  however,  that  whatever  right  followed 
upon  priority  belonged  to  the  Dutch,  and  by  inheritance  to  the 
English.  This  was  always  the  claim  at  Albany,  and  when 
the  French  seized  upon  Niagara,  the  English  pronoimced  it  an 
encroachment  upon  the  Iroquois  country,  as,  indeed,  Charlevoix 
acknowledged  it  was.  At  the  same  time,  the  French  contended 
that  it  was  a  part  of  the  St.  Lawrence  valley,  which  was  theirs 
by  virtue  of  Cartier's  and  later  discoveries.  On  this  ground 
they  also  claimed  the  valley  of  Lake  Champlain,  and  had  ad- 
vanced to  Crown  Point  in  occupying  it,  though  the  Iroquois 
considered  it  within  their  bounds. 

So  when  the  English  seized  Oswego,  it  was  in  the  French 
view  an  usurpation  of  their  rights,  "  the  most  flagrant  and  most 
pernicious  to  Canada."  This  sweeping  assertion,  transformed 
to  a  direct  statement,  meant  that  the  possession  of  Oswego  gave 
the  English  a  superior  hold  on  the  Indians.  It  also  offered 
them  a  chance  to  intercept  the  Indians  in  their  trading  jour- 
neys to  Montreal.  This  advantage,  as  already  indicated,  was 
rendered  greater  by  the  English  ability  to  give  for  two  skins  at 
Oswego  as  much  as  the  French  offered  for  ten  at  Niagara.  De 
Lancey  looked  upon  the  English  ability  to  do  this  as  the  strong- 
est tie  by  which  they  retained  the  Indians  in  their  alliance. 
"  Oswego,"  said  the  French,  "gives  us  all  the  evils,  without  the 
advantages  of  war."  Duquesne,  in  August,  1755,  confessed 
that  it  was  nothing  but  a  lack  of  pretext  which  prevented  his 
attacking  this  English  post. 

About  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Iroquois 
The  Iroquois  ^y  couqucsts  had  pushed  a  sort  of  feudal  sway  far 
conquests,  beyoud  their  ancestral  homes.  They  had  destroyed 
the  Hurons  in  the  country  west  of  the  Ottawa.  They  had  ex- 
terminated the  Eries  south  of  the  lake  of  that  name,  and  had 


THE  IROQUOIS   CONQUESTS.  327 

pushed  their  conquests  at  least  as  far  as  the  Scioto,  and  held  in 
vassalage  the  tribes  still  farther  west.  They  even  at  times 
kept  their  enemies  in  terror  well  up  to  the  Mississippi.  Some- 
what in  the  same  way  they  had  caused  their  primacy  to  be  felt 
along  the  Susquehanna.  Their  war  parties  were  known  to 
keep  the  fruitful  region  south  of  the  Ohio  in  almost  absolute 
desolation. 

The  area  included  in  these  conquests  is,  perhaps,  a  moderate 
estimate  of  what  the  English  meant  by  the  Iroquois  claim.  As 
early  as  1697,  the  Commissioners  of  Trade  and  Plantations,  in 
formulating  the  English  rights  to  sovereignty  over  the  Iroquois, 
asserted  something  larger  in  saying  that  these  confederates  held 
"  in  tributaiy  subjection  all  the  neighboring  Indians,  and  went 
sometimes  as  far  as  the  South  Sea,  the  Northwest  Passage,  and 
Florida,  as  well  as  over  that  part  of  the  coimtry  now  called 
Canada."  Mitchell,  in  1755,  claimed  that  by  the  conquest  of 
the  Shawnees  in  1672,  the  Iroquois  acquired  whatever  title  the 
original  occupiers  of  the  Ohio  valley  had,  and  that  their  con- 
quest of  the  Illinois  carried  their  rights  beyond  the  Mississippi. 

The  English  turned  these  Iroquois  conquests  to  their  advan- 
tage by  assuming  that  the  regions  covered  by  this  supremacy 
fell  to  their  jurisdiction  as  one  of  the  considerations  of  their 
alliance  with  the  confederates.  This  pretension,  in  its  most 
arrogant  form,  allowed  there  was  no  territory  not  under  Iro- 
quois control  east  of  the  Mississippi,  unless  it  was  the  region 
of  the  south,  where,  with  equal  complacency,  the  English  used 
their  friendship  with  the  Cherokees,  Chickasaws,  and  Creeks 
to  cover  aD  the  territory  of  the  modern  Gidf  States,  with  a 
bordering  region  north  of  them.  In  Huske's  English  map  of 
1755,  even  this  territory  of  the  southern  tribes  is  made  tribu- 
tary to  the  Iroquois,  as  well  as  all  east  of  the  Mississippi  and 
the  Illinois  and  Lake  Michigan,  and  of  a  line  thence  to  the 
upper  waters  of  the  Ottawa. 

Note.  The  map  on  the  following  pages  is  from  Bowen"  and  Gibson's  Xorth  America,  London, 
1763.  The  upper  section  shows  the  country  of  the  Illinois,  Mascoutins,  Miamis,  Twightwees,  all 
a  part  of  the  conquered  country  of  the  Iroquois,  wliich  is  made  to  extend  from  the  northern 
shore  of  Lake  Huron  to  We.st  Florida,  its  western  limits  being  defined  by  the  Mississippi  as  far 
north  as  the  Illinois,  along  which  the  "pecked  line"  runs  to  Lake  Michigan  and  then  north,  so  as 
to  include  the  "  Messesagues  "  on  the  northern  shore  of  Lake  Huron.  The  under  section  shows 
the  basin  of  the  Ohio,  and  places  the  position  of  the  Chickasaws  and  Catawbas.  The  present 
Tennessee  River  (called  here  Cherakee,  etc.)  was  the  route  of  the  Cherokees  from  the  mountains 
to  the  Mississippi,  but  the  origin  of  placing  on  maps  their  country  along  its  course  was  the  desire 
to  profit  by  an  alleged  claim  for  that  tribe,  pressed  by  their  English  allies,  to  strengthen  the 
English  claim  to  a  westward  extension. 


330     THE  RIVAL   CLAIMANTS  FOR  NORTH  AMERICA. 

In  pushing  their  conquests  to  the  Illinois,  the  Iroquois  claimed, 
„   ,. ,    as  Pownall  tells  us,  that  they  warred  upon  these  dis- 

The  Engbsh  . 

claim.  tant  savages  because  it  was  necessary  to  protect  the 

beaver,  which  the  Illinois  were  exterminating.  There  was  little 
reason  for  so  benign  an  excuse,  for  the  ravages  of  the  con- 
federates were  simply  prompted  by  an  inherent  martial  spirit. 
So  distinguished  a  student  of  their  career  as  Mr.  Horatio  Hale 
is  inclined  to  give  them  a  conspicuously  beneficent  character, 
which,  however,  hardly  met  the  approval  of  a  more  famous  stu- 
dent, the  late  Francis  Parkman. 

This  Iroquois-English  claim  had  distinguished  advocates  in 
Golden,  Franklin,  and  Pownall,  but  there  was  some  abatement 
at  times  in  its  pretensions.  Sir  William  Johnson,  in  1763, 
traced  the  line  of  this  dependent  country  along  the  Blue  Ridge, 
back  of  Virginia  to  the  head  of  the  Kentucky  River ;  down  that 
current  to  the  Ohio  above  the  falls ;  thence  to  the  south  end  of 
Lake  Michigan  ;  along  its  eastern  shore  to  Mackinac ;  and  north- 
east to  the  Ottawa,  and  down  that  river  to  the  St.  Lawrence. 
The  right  of  the  English  king  to  such  a  territory  as  this  dated 
back,  as  the  English  claimed,  to  an  alleged  deed  of  sale  in 
1701,  when  the  Iroquois  ceded  these  hunting-grounds  to  English 
jurisdiction,  in  addition  to  their  ancestral  lands.  It  was,  as 
they  claimed,  a  title  supplementing  that  of  their  sea-to-sea  char- 
ters. When  the  French  cited  the  treaty  of  Ryswick  (1697)  as 
giving  them  sway  over  the  river  basins  where  they  held  the 
mouths,  and  claimed  this  as  paramount  to  any  rights  the  Iroquois 
could  bestow,  the  English  fell  back  on  these  territorial  charters 
as  the  most  ancient  and  valid  claim  of  all. 

If  the  English  charter  claims  were  preposterous,  this  supple- 
mental one  was,  in  even  some  part  of  contemporary  opinion, 
equally  impudent  and  presumptuous.  There  was  by  no  means 
an  im divided  sentiment  among  the  colonists  upon  this  point ; 
and  history  has  few  more  signal  instances  of  tergiversation  than 
when,  at  a  later  day,  the  English  government  virtually  acknow- 
ledged the  justice  of  the  French  claim  in  urging  the  passage 
(1774)  of  the  Quebec  Bill.  "  We  went  to  war,"  said  Towns- 
hend,  in  the  debates  on  this  bill,  "  calling  it  Virginia,  which 
you  now  claim  as  Canada." 

We  read  in  Franklin's  statement,  in  1765,  before  the  Stamp 
Act  Committee,  that  the  Virginia  Assembly  seriously  questioned 


THE   TREATY  OF  UTRECHT.  331 

the  right  of  the  king  to  the  territory  in  dispute.  George  Cro- 
ghan,  on  the  contrary,  in  a  communication  to  Secretary  Peters 
of  Pennsylvania,  wondered  how  anybody  coukl  doubt  that  the 
French  on  the  Alleghany  were  encroaching  upon  the  charter 
limits  of  Pennsylvania. 

The  French  were  more  unanimous  in  their  view  ;  but  it  was 
only  gradually  that  they  worked  up  to  a  full  expression  of  it. 
Bellin,  the  map-maker  for  Charlevoix,  had  drawn  in  his  early 
drafts  the  limits  of  New  France  more  modestly  than  the  French 
government  grew  to  maintain,  and  he  was  soon  instructed  to 
fashion  his  maps  to  their  largest  claims.  In  like  manner  the 
earliest  English  map-makers  slowly  came  to  the  pitch  of  audacity 
which  the  politicians  stood  for,  and  Bollan,  in  1748,  complained 
that  Popple  (1732),  Keith  (1733),  Oldmixon  (1741),  MoU 
(at  several  dates),  and  Bowen  (1747)  had  been  recusant  to 
English  interests.  It  was  not  till  Mitchell  produced  his  map 
in  1755  that  the  most  ardent  claimant  for  English  rights  was 
satisfied. 

The  instructions  of  Duquesne,  in  1752,  say  that  "  't  is  certain 
that  the  Iroquois  have  no  rights  on  the  Ohio,  and  the  xhe  French 
pretended  rights  thi'ough  them  of  the  English  is  a  •*®"'^^- 
chimera."  In  the  negotiations  of  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  in 
1713,  the  English  had  succeeded  in  getting  an  admission  from 
the  French  which  required  all  the  resources  of  French  diplo- 
macy to  qualify.  This  was  an  acknowledgment  of  the  English 
sovereignty  over  the  Iroquois.  The  French  at  a  later  day,  when 
they  felt  better  able  to  enforce  their  views,  sniffed  at  the  obli- 
gation, and  called  the  phrase  "  a  simple  enunciation  "  in  words 
of  no  binding  significance,  —  a  summary  way  of  looking  at  an 
obligation  which  could  demolish  any  contract.  When  they 
condescended  to  explain  what  they  sniffed  at,  they  insisted  that 
the  Iroquois  themselves  never  acknowledged  such  a  subjection. 
Sir  William  Johnson  was  frank  enough  to  call  the  connection 
of  the  English  and  Iroquois  one  of  alliance  rather  than  sub- 
jection. The  French  further  pointed  out  what  was  true,  that 
the  Iroquois  did  not  always  consider  it  necessary  to  consult  the 
English  when  making  treaties  or  declaring  war.  Again,  when 
forced  to  other  explanations,  the  French  maintained  that  the 
subjection  of  the  Iroquois  in  their  persons  did  not  carry  sover- 


332     THE   RIVAL    CLAIMANTS  FOR  NORTH  AMERICA. 

elgiity  over  their  lands.  If  it  did,  they  said,  the  Iroquois  who 
occupy  lands  at  Caughuawaga  would  be  equally  subject  in 
land  and  person,  and  that  would  involve  the  absurdity  of  yield- 
ing to  the  English  jurisdiction  territory  at  the  very  gates  of 
Montreal. 

There  was  another  clause  in  this  treaty  of  Utrecht  which  the 
The  Indian  Frcncli  werc  hard  put  to  interpret  to  their  advan- 
trade.  tagc.     This  was  the  clause  by  which  the  French  ac- 

knowledged the  English  right  to  trade  with  all  Indians.  The 
minutes  of  instruction  given  to  Duquesne  show  how  this  was 
interpreted.  "  The  English  may  pretend  that  we  are  bound  by 
the  treaty  of  Utrecht  to  permit  the  Indians  to  trade  with  them ; 
but  it  is  sure  that  nothing  Can  oblige  us  to  allow  this  trade  on 
our  own  lands."  This,  in  the  light  of  the  French  claim  to  the 
water-sheds  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Mississippi,  would 
debar  the  English  from  trading  at  Oswego  and  on  the  Ohio. 

In  1726,  by  a  treaty  made  on  September  14,  and  which  Gov- 
ernor Pownall  prints  in  his  Adininistration  of  the  Colonies^ 
the  English  had  secured  a  fresh  recognition  by  the  Iroquois  of 
their  guardianship  over  them.  By  this  compact  the  Senecas, 
Cayugas,  and  Onondagas,  falling  in  with  the  concessions  of  the 
Mohawks  and  Oneidas  in  1684,  surrendered  a  tract  from  Os- 
wego to  Cuyahoga  (Cleveland),  with  an  extent  inland  of  sixty 
miles. 

A  score  of  years  and  more  passed  thereafter  before  the 
French  became  fully  sensible  that  they  must  forcibly  contest 
their  claim  to  the  Ohio.  By  this  time  their  plan  had  fully 
ripened  of  connecting  Canada  and  Louisiana  by  a  chain  of  posts, 
and  of  keeping  the  English  on  the  seaward  side  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies.  In  this,  they  were  convinced,  lay  a  riper  future  for 
New  France  rather  than  in  crossing  the  Mississippi  and  dis- 
puting sovereignty  with  the  Spaniard.  This  accomplished,  they 
hoped  to  offer  a  barrier  against  the  English  effective  enough  to 
prevent  their  wresting  from  Spain  the  silver  mines  beyond  the 
Mississippi. 

The  French  had  always  claimed  priority  on  the  Ohio,  and 
when   Celoron  was   sent   in  1749  to   take   formal   possession 

Note.    The  opposite  map  is  from  Mitchell's  Map  of  the  British  Colonies  (1755).     It  shows  the 
Wabash  country,  and  gives  the  contemporary  claims  as  to  the  Iroquois  rights. 


334     THE  RIVAL    CLAIMANTS  FOR   NORTH  AMERICA. 

along  its  banks,  by  hanging  royal  insignia  on  trees  and  bury- 
On  the  i'^S  graven  plates  in  the  soil,  that  officer  professedly 

*^^'°'  made  "  a  renewal  of  possession  of  the  Ohio  and  all  its 

affluents,"  —  a  possession  originally  established  "  by  arms  and 
treaties,  particularly  those  of  Ryswick,  Utrecht,  and  Aix-la- 
Chapelle."  There  was  urgency  for  such  a  "  renewal,"  for  Ce- 
loron  found  that  the  English  were  already  in  possession  of  the 
country,  so  far  as  the  friendly  sanction  of  the  natives  signified 
it.  Thus,  the  Iroquois  claim  to  that  extent  had  proved  effec- 
tive, and  Golden  has  distinctly  expounded  it  in  his  History 
of  the  Five  Nations.  It  was  also  clearly  traced  in  maps  by 
Jefferys  in  1753,  and  by  Mitchell  and  Huske  in  1755. 

It  was,  therefore,  a  necessity  for  the  French  to  use  force,  if 
they  were  to  make  good  their  claims  by  holding  the  valley. 
Accordingly,  we  find,  in  1751,  La  Jonquiere  instructed  "  to 
drive  from  the  Beautiful  River  [Ohio]  any  European  foreigners, 
and  in  a  manner  of  expulsion  which  should  make  them  lose  all 
taste  for  trying  to  return."  With  the  usual  French  diplomatic 
reservation,  that  governor  was  further  enjoined  "  to  observe,  not- 
withstanding, the  cautions  practicable  in  such  matters." 

There  is  a  Memoire  of  1751  which  sets  forth  the  French 
anxiety  lest  the  English,  by  securing  a  post  on  the  Ohio,  should 
be  able  to  keep  the  Indians  in  alienation  from  the  French. 
Such  English  success  would  mean  a  danger  to  French  commu- 
nications with  the  settlers  on  the  Mississippi,  who  stood  in  par- 
ticular need  of  Canadian  assistance  in  the  war  which  was  waged 
against  them  by  the  Carolina  Indians,  instigated  by  the  English 
there.  Without  such  a  bar  to  their  progress  as  the  French 
possession  of  the  Ohio,  the  English  could  easily  advance,  not 
only  upon  the  French  posts  among  the  Illinois,  but  they  could 
endanger  the  portage  of  the  Miami,  which  was  the  best  route 
from  Canada,  and  which  if  lost  might  involve  the  abandonment 
of  Detroit. 

The  conclusion  of  this  complaint  is  twofold :  Detroit  must  be 
strengthened  by  a  farming  population  about  it  for  its  support, 
in  order  to  preserve  it  as  the  best  place  to  overawe  the  con- 
tinent. The  Illinois  counti*y  must  be  protected;  its  buffalo 
trade  fostered ;  that  animal's  wool  made  marketable ;  and  the 
custom  of  salting  its  flesh  prevail  so  that  the  necessity  of  de- 
pending on  Martinico  for  meat  be  avoided. 


NEGOTIATIONS.  335 

The  movement  of  the  French  on  the  Alleghany  in  1754  had 
put  an  end  to  temporizing.    Albemarle,  who  was  Eng-  -^^^  ^-^^ 
land's    ambassador  at  Paris,  was  a   butterfly  and  a  '^^*"'*' 
reprobate,  and  he  was  little  calculated  to  mend  matters,  now 
easily  slipping  from  bad  to  worse. 

A  tough  and  sturdy  young  Yankee,  then  keeping  school  in 
Worcester,  Mass.,  John  Adams  by  name,  represented  the  rising 
impatience  of  the  colonists,  who  had  not  forgotten  their  yeoman 
service  at  Louisbourg.  He  looked  forward  to  the  complete 
expulsion  of  "the  turbulent  Gallicks  I  " 

The  year  1755  opened  with  events  moving  rapidly.  In  Jan- 
uary, France  proposed  to  leave  matters  as  they  were  and  let 
commissioners  settle  the  dispute  in  details.  England  in  re- 
sponse fell  back  on  the  treaty  of  Utrecht.  In  February,  France 
proposed  as  a  substitute  that  all  east  of  the  mountains  should 
belong  to  England,  and  all  west  of  the  Alleghany  River  and 
north  of  the  Ohio  should  fall  to  France.  This  left  as  neutral 
territory  the  slope  from  the  mountains  to  the  Alleghany  and  the 
region  south  of  the  Ohio.  In  March,  England  assented  to  this, 
provided  the  French  woidd  destroy  their  posts  on  the  Alleghany 
and  Ohio.  This  would  make  a  break  in  the  French  cordon  con- 
necting Canada  with  the  Mississippi,  and  would  give  the  English 
an  advantage  in  the  control  of  the  neutral  country.  So  France 
refused  the  terms.  In  June,  England  again  resorted  to  the 
conditions  of  Utrecht,  and  insisted  on  the  validity  of  the  Iro- 
quois claim.  France  reiterated  her  denial  of  such  a  claim  as 
regards  the  territory,  but  acknowledged  it  in  respect  to  persons 
of  the  confederates.  England  insisted,  as  well  she  might,  that 
this  was  not  the  interpretation  put  upon  similar  provisions  in 
other  treaties.  Her  ministers  now  reminded  Braddock  of  this 
provision  in  the  treaty  of  1726,  and  instructed  him  to  act  accord- 
ingly. This  brought  the  business  to  the  pitch  of  war,  though 
both  sides  hesitated  to  make  a  declaration.  Galissonniere  held 
it  to  be  the  testimony  of  aU  maps  that  France  was  right  in  her 
claim,  and  her  possession  of  what  she  strove  for  was  now  to  be 
settled  by  sterner  methods. 

Danville  and  the  other  French  map-makers  had  been  brought 
to  representations  that  kept  Galissonniere's  statement 
true.     The  English  cartographers  had  done   equally  oiuocoim- 
weU  for  their  side,  and  MitcheU  could  be  cited  to  ad-    '^^' 


336     THE  RIVAL    CLAIMANTS   FOR   NORTH  AMERICA. 

vantage.  His  Map  of  the  British  and  French  Dominions  in 
North  America  was  based  on  documents  which  the  English 
Board  of  Trade  thought  best  enforced  their  claim,  and  the  pub- 
lication, when  made,  in  1755,  was  dedicated  to  their  secretary. 
In  an  accompanying  text  the  English  claim  was  pushed  to  its 
utmost,  and  every  old  story  was  revamped  which  served  to 
bolster  pretensions  of  the  English  preceding  the  French  in 
exploring  the  country,  reviving  the  antiquated  boast  that  New 
Engianders  had  even  preceded  the  French  in  crossing  the  Mis- 
sissippi, and  had  really  furnished  the  guides  for  La  Salle's 
discoveries. 

Perhaps  the  best  knowledge  which  was  attainable  at  this  day 
of  the  valley  of  the  Ohio  had  been  reached  by  Christopher  Gist, 
who,  in  his  wandering,  had  corrected  the  supposed  curves  and 
trends  of  that  river.  Lewis  Evans,  in  June,  1750,  made  his 
proposals  to  visit  and  map  the  country  under  disguise  as  a 
trader,  and  in  the  pay  of  the  province  of  Pennsylvania.  His 
map  of  the  British  3Iiddle  Colonies  was  published  at  Phila- 
delphia just  in  time  to  be  of  use  to  Braddock.  Washington 
later  said  of  it  that,  "  considering  the  early  period,  it  was  done 
with  amazing  exactness."  The  governor  of  Pennsylvania  was 
satisfied  that  Evans  had  mapped  the  Alleghanies  correctly,  and 
contended  that  this  new  draft  showed  how  much  would  be  lost 
if  the  English  made  these  mountains  their  bounds. 

Of  the  country  in  dispute,  Evans's  map  in  one  of  its  legends 
represents  :  "  Were  nothing  at  stake,"  it  reads,  "  between  the 
crown  of  Great  Britain  and  France  but  the  lands  in  the  Ohio, 
we  may  reckon  it  as  great  a  prize  as  has  ever  been  contended 
for  between  two  nations,  for  this  country  is  of  that  vast  extent 
westward  as  to  exceed  in  good  land  all  the  European  dominions 
of  Great  Britain,  France,  and  Spain,  and  which  are  almost 
destitute  of  inhabitants.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive,  had  his 
Majesty  been  made  acquainted  with  its  value  and  great  impor- 
tance, and  the  huge  strides  the  French  have  been  making  for 
several  years  past  in  their  encroachments  on  his  dominions,  that 
his  Majesty  would  sacrifice  one  of  the  best  gems  in  his  crown 
to  their  usurpation  and  boundless  ambition." 

The  opinion  of  James  Maury,  that  whoever  was  left  at  the 
end  of  the  war  in  possession  of  the  Lakes  and  the  Ohio  would 
control  the  continent,  was  not,  at  this  time,  an  unfamiliar  one 


THE  RESULTS.  337 

in  the  public  mind.  It  was,  moreover,  not  unconnected  with 
the  belief  that  in  the  time  to  come  a  route  west  by  the  Hudson 
or  the  Potomac,  connecting-  with  these  vaster  water-ways  of  the 
interior,  would  make  some  point  on  the  Atlantic  coast  "  the 
grand  emporium  of  all  East  Indian  commodities."  We  have 
lived  to  see  the  prophecy  verified,  but  by  other  agencies. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

THE   ANXIETY    AND   PLANS   OF    1754. 

War  existed,  and  there  had  been  no  declaration  of  hostilities. 
In  the  autumn  of  1754,  there  was  anxiety  all  along  the  barrier 
country. 

Of  the  190,000  whites  now  composing  the  population  of 
Population  Pennsylvania,  more  than  half  were  Germans.  They 
vai^a°°^^'  were  a  gregarious,  industrious  people.  They  had  been 
sc^Jteh"^'  little  accustomed  in  their  European  past  to  the  kind 
EugUsh.  q£  freedom  which  they  enjoyed  in  the  American  wilds. 
They  brought  with  them  to  the  New  World  the  homely  life  of 
the  Old.  Their  existence  was  invested  with  a  certain  pictur- 
esqueness  of  light  and  shade,  in  the  broidery  which  the  modern 
student  calls  folk-lore.  It  rendered  them  superstitious  rather 
than  imaginative.  Franklin  could  give  them  no  more  attrac- 
tive name  than  "  Palatine  boors,"  for  they  had  mainly  come 
from  the  Palatinate. 

As  compared  with  the  English  and  Scotch,  they  had  little  of 
that  adventurous  hardihood  which  subdues  the  earth  under  all 
conditions.  The  Scotch  particularly  had  been  far  less  soli- 
citous about  the  soil  they  sought.  Boswell  tells  us  that  when 
Arthur  Lee  once  spoke  of  a  colony  of  Scotch  in  Virginia,  who 
had  settled  upon  a  sterile  tract,  Dr.  Johnson  assured  him  that 
the  Scotch  would  not  know  the  land  to  be  barren. 

If  the  Germans  had  better  instincts  as  agriculturists,  they 
were  far  less  prompt  to  defend  their  lands  than  their  Scotch 
neighbors.  Sharpe  of  Maryland  said  they  were  too  apathetic  to 
bestir  themselves  against  an  enemy,  unless  war  was  at  their  very 
doors.  As  settlers,  therefore,  side  by  side  with  the  Scotch-Irish, 
the  confused  mixture  of  blood  formed  an  incongruous  commu- 
nity when  to  the  German  phlegm  was  added  the  passionate 
temper  and  immovable  prejudice  of  the  Celt.  This  ethnic  in- 
compatibility had  indeed  become  so  obvious,  that  of  late  those 


DINWIDDIE.  339 

who  controlled  the  settling  immigrants  in  the  province  had  en- 
deavored to  keep  the  Teutonic  element  as  much  as  possible  in 
the  east,  letting  the  more  active  Scotch-Irish  appropriate  the 
country  toward  the  west. 

There  were  political  considerations  also  which  obtruded  upon 
the    prudent,    when    it   was    considered  what  violent  German 


haters  of  papists  the  Scotch  were,  and  what  unbending  anl^the*'^ 
sectaries  the  German  Catholics  were.  Dinwiddle,  a  ^'^™'='»- 
Scot  himself,  expressed  solicitude  at  this  influx  of  German  Cath- 
olics, and  Franklin  discloses  a  prevalent  fear  when  he  says : 
"The  French,  who  watch  all  advantages,  are  now  themselves 
making  a  German  settlement  back  of  us  in  the  Illinois  country, 
and  by  means  of  these  Germans  they  may  in  time  come  to 
an  understanding  with  ours ;  and  indeed,  in  the  last  war,  our 
Germans  showed  a  general  disposition  that  seemed  to  bode  us 
no  good."  At  Fredericton,  on  the  Maryland  frontier,  a  Ger- 
man colony  had  been  recently  increased  by  many  French  from 
Alsace  and  Lorraine,  not  without  raising  a  suspicion  that  some 
of  them  taken  prisoners  by  the  French  from  the  Ohio  would 
prove  useful  to  the  foe  as  informers  and  spies  upon  the  English. 
In  fact,  there  had  already  begun  to  be  the  apprehension,  which 
Burke  later  expresses,  that  Pennsylvania  at  least  might  be 
eventually  lost  to  the  English  by  the  vast  preponderance  of  its 
alien  races. 

It  had  been  a  condition  of  Washington's  capitulation  at  Fort 
Necessity  that  the  English  would  not  for  a  year  erect 

T      ./t  1  ^1  .  Dinwiddie 

any  buildings  on  the  western  slope  oi  the  mountains,  and  the 
Dinwiddie,  with  the  same  blunt  indifference  to  obliga- 
tions which  made  him  abandon  the  hostages  which  Washington 
gave,  had  no  intention  to  abide  by  such  terms.  His  self-will 
was  gi-eater  when  he  heard  by  rumor  that  the  French  intended 
to  build  forts  on  the  Greenbrier,  Holston,  and  New  rivers  in 
what  is  now  eastern  Kentucky  and  Tennessee.  The  story 
went  that  they  intended  to  bring  up  for  this  purpose  a  force 
from  the  Mississippi.  Sharpe  had  heard  similar  reports,  and 
was  transmitting  them  to  Calvert,  his  English  master.  All 
this  served  to  irritate  Dinwiddie,  and  he  gave  his  House  of  Bur- 
gesses a  touch  of  his  spleen  when  he  prorogued  them  on  Sep- 
tember 5.      "  I  thank   God,"   he  said,  "  I  have  never   before 


340  THE  ANXIETY  AND  PLANS   OF  1754. 

had  to  do  with  such  wrong-headed  people."  The  fact  was,  they 
had  pointedly  foiled  him  in  some  of  his  plans,  particularly  in 
refusing  to  support  parties  of  observation,  which  the  governor 
had  wished  to  send  toward  Duquesne,  so  as  to  be  ready  for 
prompt  action  in  the  spring,  before  Contrecoeur  could  be  rein- 
forced. 

Dinwiddle,  though  of  a  stubborn  and  rather  narrow  nature, 
was  by  no  means  destitute  of  prevision,  and  had  a  clear  percep- 
tion of  what  the  maintenance  of  English  power  on  the  Ohio 
demanded.  While  he  was  endeavoring  to  force  or  cajole  his 
assembly  into  action,  he  was  communicating  with  De  Lancey 
of  New  York,  and  with  no  very  clear  sense  of  the  geographi- 
cal possibilities,  was  expecting  him  to  prevent  relief  j)arties  of 
the  French  passing  Oswego.  Tiirning  to  his  nearer  neighbor, 
Sharpe  of  Maryland,  he  urged  him  to  occupy  one  of  the  moun- 
tain passes  and  stand  ready  at  that  point  to  push  a  force  into 
the  valley  at  a  moment  to  be  agreed  upon.  It  was  Sharjoe's  be- 
lief that  the  weather  would  prevent  the  French  reinforcement 
reaching  Contrecoeur  before  the  beginning  of  April,  and  that 
to  secure  a  pass  was  about  all  that  could  be  done.  Croghan 
had  already  reported  on  the  information  of  an  Indian  that  re- 
cruits were  even  thus  early  coming  to  Fort  Duquense  at  the 
rate  of  two  hundred  a  day.  "  This  Indian  is  to  be  believed,  if 
there  can  be  any  credit  given  to  what  an  Indian  says,"  was 
Croghan' s  assurance. 

As  the  autumn  advanced  (1754),  the  feeling  improved.  A 
Western  ^^^  families  at  Draper's  Meadows  —  the  modern 
Av°t^mn°*^'  Smithfield  —  had  ventured  to  push  forward  and  settle 
1754.  west  of  New  River.    The  House  of  Burgesses  in  Octo- 

ber voted  X20,000,  and  Dinwiddle  took  courage.  Sharpe  was 
besrinnino-  also  to  take  heart.  He  even  cherished  a  scheme  of  a 
winter  attack  on  Duquesne,  with  the  hope  of  seizing  an  island 
near  by  and  fortifying  it  as  a  base  for  further  operations  in  the 
spring.  The  stories  which  he  heard  of  the  French  intention  of 
harrying  the  frontier  during  the  winter  made  him  more  eager. 
In  December,  he  wrote  to  Dinwiddie  that  eleven  hundred  French 
and  seventy  Adirondacks  were  already  at  Duquesne,  while  a 
force  said  to  nmnber  four  hundred  French  and  two  hundred 
Caughnawagas  and  Ottawas  were  preparing  to  join  them.  He 
had  also  heard  that  three  hundred  French  families  were  taking 


THE  HALF-KING.  341 

home  lots  among  the  Twightwees  at  the  remoter  end  of  Lake 
Erie.  The  governor  of  Pennsylvania  was  repeating  similar 
stories  to  his  assembly,  hoping  thereby  to  lift  them  from  their 
apathy.  The  entire  force  of  French  now  available  for  the  next 
campaign  was  thought  to  be  two  thousand,  white  and  red. 
With  such  stories  the  public  mind  was  filled.  But  the  Quaker 
and  German  elements  in  Pennsylvania  listened  with  little 
emotion,  and  the  assembly,  or  at  least  some  part  of  it,  dared  to 
inquire  if  the  Indians  did  not  own  this  territory,  which  they 
were  asked  to  protect.  At  least,  they  said,  it  concerned  the 
king  and  not  them,  for  the  Board  of  Trade  map  showed  that  it 
was  beyond  their  charter  bounds. 

The  signs  of  a  violent  rupture  with  the  Delawares,  Shawnees, 
and  Munseys  were  becoming  apparent.     We  possess  Rupture  with 
in  Charles  Thomson's  Enquiry  a  dispassionate  contem-  t^^e  Indians. 
porary  account  of  the   colonial  tergiversations  which  had  pro- 
voked these  tribes.     The  friends  of  colonial  honor  cannot  to-day 
read  it  with  complacency,  nor  without  a  measure  of  sympathy 
with  Teedyuscung,  the  chieftain,  who  was  endeavoring  to  right 
the  native  wrongs.     At  this  juncture,  the  Indian  leader  called 
the  Half -King  died,  and  the  English  lost  in  him  a  good  Haif-King 
mediator.     His    dying   was   attributed   to    what   was  ^^^^' 
called  "  French  witchcraft ;  "  but  Governor  Morris  discredited 
the  charge,  and  with  good  reason.     The  last  scene  occurred  at 
Paxton  on  October  4,  1754,  and  Croghan  was  soon  recording 
that  he  was  endeavoring  "  to  wipe  away  the  Indian  tears  by 
presents  to  the  amount  of  £20." 

Governor  Morris  was  having  quite  as  weary  a  time  with  the 
Pennsylvania  Assembly  as  Dinwiddie  had  had  with  his 

TT'        T  c   •        1  •  T     1  •  ThePenn- 

burgesses.       His  distant    iriends    commiserated   him.   syivania 
Shirley  wrote  from  Boston  :  "  I  have  no  leaf  in  my  book 
for  managing  a  Quaker  Assembly.     If  I  had   it  should  be  at 
your  service."   His  predecessor  Thomas,  now  at  Antigua,  wrote  : 
"  You  must  either  drive  the  French  back  to  their  lakes  or  they 
will  drive  you  into  the  sea ;  and  if  the  northern  colonies  do  not 
speedily  unite  they  will  carry  their  point "  in  securing  an  Atlan- 
tic port.     For  years  the  French  had  longed  for  this   T,,e  French 
Atlantic  harbor  to  relieve  their  wintry  imprisonment  AUantSs 
on  the  ice-bound  St.  Lawrence.     Morris  was  perhaps  p°''*" 


342  THE  ANXIETY  AND  PLANS   OF  1754. 

less  inclined  than  the  neighboring  governors  to  belittle  the  ob- 
stacles in  view,  for  he  rather  credulously  believed  that  the 
French  had  already  gathered  five  or  six  thousand  regulars  at 
Duquesne.  Croghan  was  sending  him  word  that  the 
and  the  Ohio  Indians  were  ready  to  assist  an  English  expedi- 
tion, but  they  would  only  do  so  on  the  English  supply- 
ing clothing  and  other  necessaries  to  their  squaws  and  cliildren. 
Croghan  seemed  loth  to  believe  that  the  dissatisfaction  of  the 
Indians  was  widespread ;  but  he  was  conscious  that  the  French 
blandishments  had  done  much.  No  doubt  a  part  of  the  savage 
uneasiness  was  traceable  to  the  backwardness  of  the  English 
movements,  for  the  Indian  is  taken  with  quick  and  bold  deter- 
mination. Accordingly,  Croghan  urged  upon  the  Pennsylvania 
authorities  to  draw  the  tribes  over  the  mountains  and  settle 
them  along  the  Susquehanna,  where  they  could  be  more  easily 
Conrad  watchcd  and  supported.  Conrad  Weiser  had  already 
Weiser.  bccu  Working  to  this  end  among  the  Ohio  Indians,  and 
had  counseled  them  to  settle  at  Aughwick,  east  of  the  divide.  He 
quickly  formulated  for  the  governor  a  speech  in  which  the  sav- 
ages were  told  that  "  after  the  king  of  Great  Britain  had  tried 
all  fair  means  to  remove  the  French  from  their  Ohio  forts,  he 
would  take  his  foes  by  the  arm  and  fling  them  across  the  lake 
where  they  came  from." 

In  December  (1754),  notwithstanding  a  speech  "  calculated 
to  rouse  his  assembly  from    their  supineness,"  Mor- 

Pennsylva-  .  _^.         .ti*.         ■,  iii 

nia  votes       ns  wrotc  to  Dmwiddic  that  he  had  not  been  able  to 
induce  them  to  vote  a  single  farthing ;  but  within  ten 
days  he  adds  a  postscript,  to  say  that  the  legislature  had  at  last 
voted  <£5000  "  to  help  his  Majesty's  forces." 

Farther  south,  the  governor  of  North  Carolina  was  waxing 
North  caro-  Warm  in  his  dealings  with  his  assembly.  He  told 
"°^"  them  that  the  French,  being  unable  in  Europe  to  over- 

power the  House  of  Austria,  had  turned  to  America  in  the 
hopes  of  dividing  its  magnificent  spaces  with  Spain  for  the 
benefit  of  the  House  of  Bourbon.  He  had  much  to  say  of 
"  hellish  missionaries  "  stirring  up  the  Indians ;  of  the  seizing 
of  strategic  points  on  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi,  and  of  "  schemes 
hatched  in  hell  and  supported  by  the  court  of  Rome."  He 
ended  by  an  appeal  to  the  colonies  to  unite  and  drive  their  foes 
to  "  inhospitable  Canada  and  the  hot  sands  of  Louisiana." 


THE   CONGRESS   OF  ALBANY.  343 

Early  in  the  summer  of  1754,  it  was  hoped  that  a  movement 
had  been  inaugurated  which  woukl   have  brought  a  Hopes  of 
more  confident  spirit  to  grace  the  closing  year.     This  Engii"?.*^* 
was  to  follow  the  fruition  of  a  scheme  for  unitina:  the  <=°^°'"e8- 
English  colonies  in  a  political  bond.     For  a  long  time,  schemes 
of  imion  had  been  in  the  air,  and  they  embodied  a  general  pro- 
pitiation of  the  Indians  and  a  combination  to  check  the  French. 
The  proposers  generally  had  small  thought  of  the  effect  which 
such  a  union  might  have  on  the  mother  country,  but  the  home 
government  could  hardly  be  counted  upon  for  a  like  indifference. 

To  manage  the  Indians  as  the  custom  went  required  money 
and  the  practice  of  some  virtues,  with  a  due  appor- 
tionment of  the  vices  of  deceit  and  cajolery.  Neither  ment  of  the 
French  nor  English  lacked  in  a  selfish  emulation  in 
these  respects.  Governor  Osborne  of  New  York  had,  in  1753, 
brought  over  from  England  thirty  silver  medals,  showing  the 
stolid  head  of  George  III.  By  using  these  to  decorate  the  lead- 
ing chiefs  of  the  Iroquois  and  remoter  tribes,  it  was  hoped  to 
appease  them.  There  was  need  of  this,  especially  among  the 
Onondagas  and  Senecas,  whom  the  French  were  craftily  en- 
ticing. On  the  other  hand,  Duquesne  and  Piquet  were  by  no 
means  sure  of  all  the  vagrants  who  had  sought  the  mission  of 
La  Presentation,  since  among  the  seeming  neophytes  they  much 
suspected  there  were  spies  of  the  English. 

In  the  autumn  of  1753,  the  governor  of  New  York  had  received 
a  circular  from  the  home  government,  directing  him  ^  congress 
to  call  a  meeting  of  commissioners  fi'om  the  several  *^^'®^' 
colonies  at  Albany  to  take  existing  affairs  under  consideration. 
Governor  Shirley  of  Massachusetts  had    come   back  Governor 
from  Europe  after  his  futile  services  in  Paris  in  try-  ^'"''^^y- 
ing  to  settle  differences  with  the  French.    He  had  brought  with 
him  a  young  Catholic  wife,  daughter  of  his  landlady  in  Paris, 
to  introduce  her  with  considerable  hazard  into  the  conservative 
social  circles  of  Boston.     This  town  had,  indeed,  lost  a  good 
deal  of  its  Puritanic  rigor,  but  it  had  gained  little  in  admiration 
of  "  French  Papists,"     There  was  some  fear  that  Shirley's  ad- 
herence to  Protestant  and  English  views  might  prove   to  be 
somewhat  weakened.     It  did  not  take  long,  it  proved,  to  dispel 
the  suspicion,  and  it  seems  to  have  been  at  Shirley's  instigation 


344  THE  ANXIETY  AND  PLANS   OF  175^. 

that  these  orders  for  the  Albany  convocation  were  issued. 
Among  the  colonists  there  grew  a  prevalent  opinion  that  if  any 
union  was  consummated,  Shirley  was  the  fittest  man  to  preside 
over  it. 

The  meeting  was  fixed  for  June  14, 1754,  but  it  was  the  19th 
The  con-  bcforc  the  delegates  assembled.  They  came  from 
Aibln^*  New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  Con- 
june,  1754.  ^ecticut,  Ncw  York,  Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland. 
Conspicuous  among  them  was  William  Johnson  of  New  York, 
whose  success  in  dealing  with  the  Indians  was  everywhere  recog- 
nized. Not  less  influential  was  Thomas  Hutchinson  of  Massa- 
chusetts, a  stickler  for  the  royal  prerogative,  but  who  deserved 
well  of  his  province  for  having  led  it  out  of  the  sloughs  of  an 
irredeemable  paper  currency.  Stephen  Hopkins  of  Rhode 
Island  and  Roger  Wolcott  of  Connecticut  were  men  of  mark. 
Most  conspicuous  of  all,  however,  was  Benjamin  Franklin  of 
Pennsylvania. 

The  questions  before  them  were  manifold,  and  that  of  concili- 
Questions  atiug  the  Indians  was  to  many  minds  paramount.  The 
considered.  Lords  of  Trade  had  not  long  before  administered  a 
rebuke  to  the  New  York  Assembly  for  its  neglect  of  oppor- 
tunities to  this  end.  This  neglect  was  now  showing  fruits  in 
the  unamiable  mood  which  the  assembled  Indians  evinced. 
Promises  had  been  given  out  that  there  would  be  a  distribution 
of  gifts,  which  was  usually  sure  to  increase  the  savage  follow- 
ing in  case  of  conferences.  The  announcement,  however,  had 
had  no  very  marked  effect  at  this  time,  and  the  commissioners 
reckoned  it  a  "melancholy  consideration  "  that  scarce  a  hundred 
and  fifty  Indians  appeared.  But  there  was  a  conspicuous  chief- 
tain among  them  in  Hendrick  the  Mohawk,  whose  eloquence 
made  a  mark. 

"  You  have  thrown  us  behind  your  backs,"  said  the  savage 
to  the  assembly,  "  and  disregard  us,  whereas  the 
thTMohawk  Frcuch  are  a  subtle  and  vigilant  people,  ever  using 
^eech-^"^  their  utmost  endeavor  to  seduce  our  people."  The 
ma  ers.  Mohawk  spokcsmau  tavinted  the  English  with  not  get- 
ting new  permissions  to  build  in  the  Indian  territory,  as  they 
had  done  when  they  built  their  trading-house  at  Oswego.  He 
told  them  they  were  women  in  not  preparing,  like  the  French, 
for  the  inevitable  war. 


^•^'i-'^^'^^' 


[From  Charles  Thomson's  Enquiry,  etc.] 


346  THE  ANXIETY  AND  PLANS   OF  1754. 

Other  chiefs  did  not  avoid  a  plain  truth  when  they  charged 
the  traders  at  Albany  with  selling  powder  and  ball  to  the 
French,  to  be  used  against  the  English  and  their  Indian  allies 
on  the  Ohio.  The  traders  at  Oswego,  they  further  alleged, 
were  supplying  the  Montreal  merchants  with  goods  to  sell  to 
the  remoter  tribes.  These  allegations  were  truer  than  the  Eng- 
lish would  acknowledge.  Nor  would  they  allow  that  the  lands 
wrested  by  jjrofessed  treaty  from  the  Shawnees  and  Delawares 
were  attained  by  artifice,  and  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
tribes  on  the  soil. 

This  violated  territory  lay  westward  of  a  line  running  from 
Shamokin  —  the  forks  of  the  Susquehanna  —  in  a  northwest 
by  north  direction  to  Lake  Erie.  It  was  thus  the  intention 
of  the  buyers  to  secure  an  Indian  fee  in  what  remained  unpur- 
chased of  the  charter  limits  of  Pennsylvania,  though  no  consid- 
eration was  to  be  given  till  it  was  taken  up  by  settlements, 
section  by  section.  The  grant  was  made  under  deceit  and 
pressure  by  unauthorized  representatives  of  the  Six  Nations, 
and  covered  lands  to  which  other  tribes  had  a  better  right.  The 
Disputed  fraud  was  so  transparent  that  the  Iroquois  Grand 
land  titles.  (Jouucil  at  Ououdaga  refused  to  confirm  it.  This  injus- 
tice had  led  to  the  confederated  movement  under  Teedyuscung, 
and  Johnson  urged  that  nothing  short  of  a  revocation  of  the 
claim  could  assuage  the  savage  irritation  at  the  despoilment. 

This  was  complicated  with  other  claims,  by  which  Connecticut 
Connecticut  bccamc  the  rival  of  Pennsylvania  under  her  sea-to-sea 
claims.  charter,  as  against  the  interposed  grant  to  William 

Penn.  To  a  similar  interposed  grant  to  the  Duke  of  York, 
Connecticut  had  bowed  without  much  difficulty ;  but  she  had, 
in  1753,  chartered  the  Susquehanna  Company,  with  seven  hun- 
dred members,  mostly  her  own  people.  They  were  to  take 
possession  of  the  Wyoming  lands  within  the  Pennsylvania  lim- 
its, but  not  as  yet  occupied  by  that  province.  Governor  Ham- 
ilton had  made  a  protest  to  the  governor  of  Connecticut,  and 
had  asked  Johnson  to  interfere,  when  it  became  evident  that 
the  agents  of  the  Susquehanna  Company  were  going  to  take 
advantage  of  the  assembly  of  tribes  at  Albany  to  consummate 
a  purchase  of  the  Indian  title.  These  agents  succeeded  in  get- 
ting the  Indians  to  sign  a  cession  on  July  11,  and  if  the  Penn- 
sylvania representatives  are  to  be  believed,  it  was  done  by  mak- 


FRENCH  AND  ENGLISH.  347 

ius:  the  grantors  drunk,  an  act  not  more  nefarious  than  some  of 
their  own  performances  when  the  Quaker  province,  or  its  mas- 
ters, coveted  the  Indian  lands.  This  transfer,  the  ground  of 
long  litigation  between  the  two  claimants,  included  the  Wyo- 
ming valley,  and  extended  westward  to  the  sources  of  the  Alle- 
ghany, and  stretched  from  latitude  41°  to  42°. 

Thus  the  Indian  problem,  by  the  cupidity  of  distant  Con- 
necticut, was  becoming  more  embarrassing  on  the  Ohio,  through 
the  forced  immigration  of  the  Pennsylvania  Indians  over  the 
eastern  barrier  of  the  Great  Valley. 

The  settling  of  the  vexed  question  of  the  relations  with  the 
savages  was  closely  connected  with  that  other  prob-  union  of 
lem  which  the   conference  was   more  confidently  ex-  coiontel"*^ 
pected   to   solve,  and  this  was   the   presenting  of  an  p'^°p°^«"^- 
indomitable  front  to  the  French  by  the  banding  together  of  the 
Atlantic  colonies. 

It  is  not  easy  to  reach  a  positive  conclusion  as  to  the  numeri- 
cal strength  of  the  rivals  now  struggling  to  usurp  con-  j^j^^i 
trol  of  a  continent.  It  is  certain  that  the  French-  p°p"1^«°°«- 
were  far  more  homogeneous  ;  in  fact,  they  were  almost  perfectly 
so.  The  English  colonies,  on  the  other  hand,  had  been  the 
refuge  of  the  hunted  Huguenot  and  the  down-trodden  German. 
There  were  few  of  the  uneasy  hordes  of  Europe  which  had  not 
sent  over  their  discontents.  It  is  probable  that  the  popidation 
of  the  Atlantic  slope  subject  to  the  British  monarch  reached 
some  twelve  or  thirteen  hundred  thousand,  and  possibly  it  may 
have  reached  a  million  and  a  half.  The  French,  in  all  their 
posts  and  settlements  from  Acadia  to  the  Mexican  gulf,  num- 
bered not  over  ninety  thousand,  perhaps  not  more  than  eighty, 
of  which  there  may  have  been  twenty-five  thousand  too  far 
distant  from  the  Ohio  country  to  be  of  much  account  in  the 
struggle.  These  remoter  settlements  were  near  the  St.  Law- 
rence and  Mexican  gidfs. 

With  this  great  disparity  between  the  two  peoples,  the  French 
had  relied  on  a  unity  of  organization  and  celerity  of  movement 
to  make  them  oftener  than  otherwise,  in  the  past,  superior  to 
their  rivals.  To  offset  this,  the  English  had  found  the  alliance 
of  the  Indians  not  always  sure,  and  sometimes  treacherous.  The 
last  resort  was  to  make  a  combination  of  power  which  could  be 


348  THE  ANXIETY  AND  PLANS   OF  175^. 

wielded  witli  something  of  the  singleness  of  purpose  which  had 
so  long  served  the  French. 

Franklin  easily  led  the  deliberations  of  the  congress  in  this 
Frankiia's  Tcspect.  He  did  not  decry  the  English  rights  under 
theTon^^ '°  their  sea-to-sea  charters ;  but  he  saw  the  practical 
gress.  disadvantages  of  these  illimitable  western  extensions 

with  a  comparatively  contracted  front  on  the  coast.  The  shape 
of  these  colonies,  he  said,  was  "  inconvenient  for  the  common 
purposes  of  government,"  and  he  urged  that  the  Alleghanies  be 
accepted  at  once  as  the  western  bounds  of  the  existing  colonies. 
He  urges  the  This  was  to  pavc  the  way  for  new  colonies  to  be  set 
barrie"^  *'^  up  as  military  barriers  beyond  the  mountains,  —  bul- 
coiomes.  warks,  indeed,  against  the  French.  He  had  first  learned 
in  Boston,  thirty  years  before,  how  to  use  the  press  in  fashion- 
ing public  opinion,  and  it  served  him  now.  He  advocated  in  a 
pamphlet  the  planting  of  one  of  these  colonies  on  Lake  Erie, 
Pownaii's  ^^^  t^6  other  on  the  Ohio.  Governor  Pownall's  views, 
views.  g^g  later  developed,  were  much  the  same  in  spirit ;  but 

while  he  centred  the  western  defense  in  a  single  colony,  —  pre- 
ferably an  Indian  one  dependent  on  the  English,  —  he  urged  a 
second  on  the  upper  Connecticut  as  needful  for  the  protection 
of  New  England.  But  Franklin's  desire  for  a  double  colony  to 
the  west  was  to  make  them  converge  like  a  wedge,  and  cleave 
the  French  cordon  of  posts  which  united  Canada  and  the  Mis- 
sissippi. Of  these  two  barrier  colonies,  he  would  have  the  one 
on  Lake  Erie  depend  for  supplies  on  Pennsylvania  by  the  passes 
to  the  Alleghany  River,  while  the  other,  on  the  Ohio  near  the 
Scioto,  would  naturally  maintain  its  communications  by  the 
Kanawha  with  Virginia.  The  scheme  also  involved  a  good  fort 
at  Niagara  and  a  flotilla  on  the  Lakes,  so  as  to  maintain  an 
ingress  by  the  Iroquois  country. 

The  evil  of  allowing  the  French  to  succeed  in  their  plans 
Franklin's  appealed  to  Franklin  strongly  on  the  social  side.  He 
views.  could  but  think  that  developed  French  colonies  over 

the  mountains  would  be  sure  to  offer  an  asylum  to  outcasts 
and  runaway  servants  from  the  English,  and  inci"ease  an  inim- 
ical and  neighboring  population.  He  wrote  to  Whitefield  that 
he  hoped  he  might  be  able,  if  his  plan  succeeded,  to  settle 
a  religious  and  industrious  people  in  these  colonial  outposts, 


RESULTS   OF  THE   CONGRESS.  349 

and  to  bring  a  new  and  healthy  influenee  upon  the  Indians.   The 
packmen,  he  contended,  had  so  far  proved  a  vicious  company, 
and  demoralized  the  tribes    by  carrying  as    servants  into  the 
wilderness  a  multitude  of  transported  Irish  and  other 
convicts.     Not  much  that  was  better  coiUd  be  said  of  and  fron- 
many  of  the  frontiersmen  in  their  isolated  cabins. 


tiersuen. 


It  was  apparent  that   Franklin's  plan  of    barrier   colonies 
promised  more  effective  administration  than  any  other  Franklin's 
yet  advanced.     A  scheme  which  Archibald  Kennedy  p°a^ns  ccm- 
had  suggested  in  1752  was  deficient  in  concentrated  *''^^*®'^- 
force.     He  would  have  allotment  of    the  over-mountain  lands 
made  by  established  proportions  among  the  existing  colonies. 
He  proposed   to  lay  out  the  territory  in   townships  after  the 
New  England  pattern.     They  were  to  be  large  enough  to  sup- 
port sixty  families  each,   with  occasional  forts  for  protection, 
while  the  Indian  trade  should  be  regulated  by  a  general  au- 
thority.    But  all  such  western  combinations  were  necessarily 
subordinated   to   a   comprehensive   plan,  by  which   the  entire 
Atlantic  seaboard  could  act  in  harmony  for  military  results. 

Dinwiddle  was  in  favor  of  two  unions,  one  at  the  north,  the 
other  at  the  south.  Few,  however,  could  see  that  the  protec- 
tion of  western  pioneers  coald  be  so  well  assured  by  any  sever- 
ance of  the  colonies  as  by  some  grand  union  of  them  all. 
Franklin's  ideas  on  the  whole  prevailed,  and  the  proposed  union 
gave  its  government  the  power  to  regulate  the  Indian  trade  ;  to 
buy  for  the  crown  all  lands  not  within  the  bounds  of  estab- 
lished colonies,  "  or  that  shall  not  be  within  their  bounds  when 
some  of  them  are  reduced  to  more  convenient  dimensions  ;  "  to 
make  new  settlements  on  such  lands  by  grants  in  the  king's 
name,  reserving  a  quit-rent  to  the  crown  for  the  general  treas- 
ury ;  and  to  make  statutes  for  such  settlements  till  the  crown 
shall  form  them  into  particular  governments. 

Protracted  sessions  of  the  congress  brought  about  at  last  a 
unanimous  acceptance  of  these  measures,  though  there  was 
undoubted  lukewarmness  on  the  part  of  some  of  the  members, 
particvilarly  those  of  Connecticut. 

The  document  was  finally  signed  on  July  4,  1754,  just  at  a 
date  when  Washington,  under  the  capitulation  of  Fort 
Necessitv,  was  withdrawinsf  the  English  flas;  from  the   agreed  upon, 

■^.  ,  .  ^  July  4,  1754, 

very  territory  they  were  seeking  to  preserve. 


350  THE  ANXIETY  AND  PLANS   OF  1754. 

The  members  went  to  their  respective  homes,  and  submitted 
but  finaUy  *^®  measure  to  their  several  assemblies.  Every  colony 
coioi^es  aud  I'^jected  it.  De  Lancey  sent  it  to  the  Lords  of  Trade, 
king.  ^jjQ  \^[^  j^^  October  29,  befoi'e  the  king,  without  com- 

ment. Here,  also,  it  was  rejected.  The  colonial  assemblies 
thought  that  the  commissioners  had  failed  in  making  a  strong 
union,  and  had  erred  in  placing  the  royal  prerogative  in  suffi- 
cient subordination.  The  king  in  council  thought  the  union 
ominously  powerful,  and  that  the  plan  boded  no  good  for  the 
royal  authority.  The  prerogative  party  in  the  colonies  found  a 
spokesman  in  Governor  Morris,  who  wrote  to  the  Earl  of  Hali- 
fax :  "  The  plan  is  very  inadequate,  and  his  Majesty  and  minis- 
ters were  to  have  less  power  in  the  united  legislature  than  they 
have  in  the  several  separate  ones,  which  might  answer  some 
purposes  here,  but  would  not  have  answered  the  ends  of  govern- 
ment, or  at  all  contributed  to  have  kept  these  provinces  in  that 
dependence  upon  the  mother  country,  so  necessary  for  the  inter- 
ests of  both." 

So  no  one  in  the  end  profited  by  the  labor  of  the  congress. 
Those  who  were  prophetic  might  discern  that  it  harbingered 
those  other  and  more  directly  fateful  convocations  of  1765  and 
1774. 

Franklin  took  the  failure  characteristically :  "  The  different 
and  contrary  reasons  of  dislike  to  my  plan  makes  me  suspect  it 
was  really  the  true  medium."  The  king,  in  rejecting  the  plan, 
had  in  fact  stood  for  English  rather  than  colonial  interests. 

Franklin  told  the  truth  bluntly,  eleven  years  later,  when  he 
underwent  his    examination    before    the    Stamp  Act 

Franklin's  .  .  _^     .      ,,  , 

later  testi-  committec.  "  As  to  the  Ohio,  he  said,  "  the  contest 
began  there  about  your  right  of  trading  in  the  Indian 
country,  a  right  you  had  by  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  which  the 
French  infringed.  They  seized  the  traders  and  their  goods, 
which  were  your  manufactures.  They  took  a  fort  which  a 
company  of  your  merchants  and  their  factors  and  correspond- 
ents [Dinwiddie  acted  under  orders  from  England]  had  erected 
there  to  secure  that  trade.  .  .  .  The  trade  with  the  Indians, 
though  carried  on  in  America,  is  not  an  American  interest.  It 
is  a  British  interest,  carried  on  with  British  manufactures,  for 
the  profit  of  British  merchants  and  manufacturers.  Therefore 
the  war,  commenced  for  the  defense  of  a  territory  of  the  crown 


THE  ALBANY  PLAN.  351 

[Nova  Scotia]  and  for  the  defense  of  a  trade  purely  British, 
was  really  a  British  war." 

Nevertheless,  the  colonists  were  the  principal  sufferers,  and 
this  rejection  of  the  Albany  plan  preserved  to  their  Advantage  to 
enemies  their  old  advantage.  The  French  still  stood  "y^^'^^^ec^ 
their  former  chances  of  brightening-  the  Indian  chain  *'°°" 
of  friendship  and  severing  the  English  rope  of  sand.  The  set- 
back did  not  diminish  Franklin's  hope  that  the  destinies  of 
North  America  were  yet  to  be  settled  by  an  English-speaking 
people,  and  the  question  was  now  to  be  solved  over  the  moun- 
tains in  efforts  to  hold  and  pass  beyond,  in  military  array,  the 
two  chief  eastern  portals  of  the  Great  Valley. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE   ALLEGHANY   PORTALS. 
1755. 

In  a  paper  which  William  Johnson  laid  before  the  Albany 
Johnson's  congress,  he  had  hinted  at  a  more  systematic  use  of 
u^g^the  t^®  S^^  Nations  in  thwarting  the  French  schemes. 
Iroquois.  jjg  ^g^g  jjQ^  skillful  at  composition,  and  one  is  some- 
what puzzled  at  his  lack  of  precision.  His  plan  was  to  possess 
their  counsel  and  interests  in  the  completest  manner  by  plant- 
ing military  posts  everywhere  among  them.  He  advised  par- 
ticularly making  the  most  of  the  advantages  which  the  English 
already  had  at  Oswego,  as  a  place  of  watch  and  ward.  It 
was  here,  too,  that  the  English  could  easiest  subject  the  Iro- 
quois and  the  more  distant  tribes  to  the  influence  of  gifts.  He 
counted  upon  what  he  felt  sure  was  the  fact,  namely,  that  the 
tribes  preferred  to  have  the  English  rather  than  the  French 
obtain  a  footing  in  the  Ohio  coimtry ;  and  that  the  Senecas 
and  Onondagas  were  most  likely  to  be  approached  by  the 
French  agents,  and  should  be  overawed  in  the  first  instance 
by  forts  placed  among  them.  As  opportunity  offered,  he  con- 
tended that  the  English  supervision  should  be  pushed  toward 
Detroit. 

When  it  became  evident,  toward  autumn,  that  the  plan  of 
A  campaign  uuiou  deviscd  at  Albany  was  to  be  set  aside,  there 
expected.  ^^^g  little  chancc  for  cautionary  provisions  to  take 
new  forms  before  a  rumor  came  over  the  sea  that  the  govern- 
ment had  made  up  its  mind  to  strike  some  sort  of  a  blow,  with 
two  regiments  of  regulars  that  were  to  be  ordered  from  Ireland 
to  America.  It  was  very  likely  now  that  measures  more  active 
and  comprehensive  than  Johnson  had  outlined  were  to  consti- 
tute the  plan  for  a  new  campaign. 

Dinwiddle,  when  he  heard  these  reports,  was  quite  as  much 


THE   TRADERS.  353 

perplexed  to  provide  for  this  royal  force,  in  victualing  and 
transportation,  as  he  had  been  with  his  assembly's  apathy. 
His  neighbor,  Governor  Sharpe,  who  had  had  a  sort  of  transient 
leadership  in  military  matters,  was  by  no  means  certain  that 
regidar  troops  could  be  trusted  in  a  forest  campaign,  with  such 
adept  woodsmen  on  the  other  side  as  the  French*  possessed. 
Besides,  there  was  evident  uneasiness  among  the  fron-  Temper  of 
tier  savages,  and  no  one  could  say  what  they  aimed  at.  *^®  savages. 
The  French  custom  of  buying  prisoners  from  the  Indians  made 
hunting  the  English  quite  as  exciting  as,  and  more  profitable 
than,  chasing  game.  The  bad  faith  of  the  Pennsylvanians  in 
their  treaties  was,  in  Johnson's  opinion,  accountable  in  part  for 
the  savage  vindictiveness.  Conrad  Weiser,  who  was  not  a  bad 
judge  of  the  Indian  temper,  did  not  share  the  apprehension  of 
Johnson,  and  he  felt  certain  that  the  French  could  not  com- 
mand entire  obedience  from  the  tribes  when  the  outbreak  came. 
If  the  French  on  the  Ohio  were  to  encounter  any  such  treachery 
from  the  natives,  the  English  had  had  their  share  of  perfidy  in 
the  Acadians,  a  race  far  removed  from  that  guileless  simplicity 
which  attracts  the  poet's  verse. 

Still,  as  ever,  the  French  could  be  trusted  in  the  trial  of  blan- 
dishments. "  The  American  strength  of  France,"  says  an  Eng- 
lish observer  of  the  time,  "compared  with  ours,  is  quite  con- 
temptible in  all  respects  but  one,  and  that  is  the  wisdom  and 
prudence  with  which  it  is  directed."  It  is  very  clear 
that  the  French  had  a  marked  advantage  in  the  far  French 
greater  loyalty  of  their  backwoods  traders,  and  we 
encounter  in  the  contemporary  reports  of  the  French  officials 
but  few  instances  of  distrust  of  their  packmen,  lest  they 
convey  intelligence  to  the  enemy.  Dinwiddle  was  quite  sure 
the  English  plans  were  sometimes  betrayed  by  the  English 
traders ;  and  Sharpe  was  as  confident  that  the  colonies  could 
not  be  depended  upon  to  garrison  the  forks  of  the  Ohio,  if  they 
should  be  retaken.  The  reason  of  his  distrust  was  that  the 
average  provincial  felt  that  any  success  against  the  French  in- 
ured to  the  benefit  of  the  British  merchant  rather  than  to  the 
interests  of  his  own  life. 

So,  with  the  failure  at  Albany,  and  with  the  environment  of 
distrust  and  solicitude,  the  new  year  (1755)  came  on.     The 


354  THE  ALLEGHANY  PORTALS. 

Shawnees  were  active  along  the  border,  and  it  became  necessary 

to  make  a  show  at  least  of  vigilance,  if  the  contagion 

neesraid       of  their  temerity  was  not  to  spread  to  the   Susque- 

the  borders.     ,  i    oi  i       i 

hanna  and  ohenandoah. 

Dinwiddie  accordingly  dispatched  Major  Andrew  Lewis,  with 
a  force  composed  partly  of  rangers  and  partly  of  Cherokees,  to 
patrol  the  frontiers.  For  this  and  other  service  the  Virginia 
burgesses  had,  as  we  have  seen,  made  a  grant  the  preceding 
October.  No  other  assembly  was  as  active,  and  what  Pennsyl- 
vania did  a  little  later  depended  on  the  exertions  of  Franklin. 

Authority  had  come  for  raising  two  American  regiments  in 
Shirley's  ^^^®  crown's  pay,  but  as  the  colonels  designated  were 
perreii'^'s  Shirley  and  Pepperrell,  both  carrying  after  ten  years 
regiments.  ^]-^g  laurcls  of  Louisbourg,  it  was  likely  the  recruiting 
would  have  to  be  done  in  New  England.  The  most  that  Din- 
widdie could  hope  was  that  these  Koyal  Americans  would  be 
used  in  a  diversion  from  the  north  toward  Canada,  so  as  to 
prevent  any  large  reinforcement  being  sent  to  Duquesne. 

The  tidings  which  reached  Virginia  from  the  south  were  not 
Carolina  ^^  hclpful.  Govcmor  Glcu  of  Carolina  was  looking 
threatened.  ^^^  j^q^  work  aloiig  liis  owu  frontiers,  and  told  Din- 
widdie that  the  attack  on  Virginia  would  be  a  feint,  while  the 
greater  force  of  the  enemy  would  ascend  the  Tennessee  and 
overrun  Carolina.  Dinwiddie  felt  he  needed  all  the  help  he 
could  get,  if  Contrecceur  had,  as  he  supposed,  already  assembled 
sixteen  hundred  men  at  the  forks. 

During  January  (1755),  it  became  known  in  Virginia  that 
Braddock  to  General  Edward  Brad  dock,  who  had  received  his 
command.  instructious  in  November,  had  been  selected  for  the 
American  command.  At  the  time  that  this  intelligence  was 
fresh  in  Virginia,  Braddock's  ship  was  leaving  the  English 
coast.  The  two  cabinets  on  each  side  of  the  English 
andEnghsh  Channel  had  been  trying  to  find  out  each  what  the 
other  really  meant  behind  the  outward  craft  which 
cloaked  their  designs.  A  certain  Irish  medical  man,  settled  in 
London,  probed,  as  it  proved,  the  cabinet  secrets  in  London  bet- 
ter for  France  than  any  one  could  do  in  Paris  for  the  English 
ministry.  It  was  professed  that  Braddock  had  no  purpose  to  be 
hostile  in  America  unless  attacked.  The  French  were  likewise 
equipping  an  armament  for  equally  innocent  ends,  as  was  rep- 


BRADDOCK'S   CAMPAIGN.  355 

I'esented.    It  was  the  real  purpose  of  the  French  to  gain  as  much 
time  as  they  could,  and  so  they  shuffled  in  diplomatic  phrases. 

Just  at  the  time  when  Braddock  was  landing  at  Hampton  in 
Virginia,  Machaidt  was  writing  to  Duquesne  that  the  French 
king  was  persuaded  the  English  did  not  intend  to  come  to  a 
rupture,  but  if  they  did  attack,  it  would  be  on  the  Ohio.  The 
Canadian  governor  was  warned  to  be  prepared  to  repel  force 
by  force,  but  not  to  strike  the  invader  until  he  had  been  sum- 
moned. Further  reinforcement  with  Bigot  and  Vaudreuil  would 
not  be  long  behind. 

Before  the  end   of   March,  Braddock's  two    regiments  had 
joined  him,  and  their  movements  were  begun.     Din- 
widdie    and   Sharpe    had    already  got   the   campaign   plan  of 

1  ici'  T     ^      •        ^   '         ..  -»y.  campaign. 

planned  tor  him,  and  their  objective  jioint  was  JNiagara, 
certainly  for  the  French  the  best  entrance  to  the  Ohio  country. 
Fort  Duquesne  was  to  fall  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  then 
Braddock  was  to  advance  up  the  Alleghany,  take  the  forts  on 
the  way  to  Presqu'  Isle,  and  proceed  to  Niagara.  Thence  he 
was  to  skirt  Ontario  to  Oswego,  where  Shirley  and  Pepperrell 
were  to  join  him  in  an  advance  on  Crown  Point. 

But  Braddock  was  determined  to  parcel  out  the  glory  rather 
than  monopolize  it.  In  order  to  arrange  some  concerted  action, 
he  summoned  on  March  10  a  meeting  of  the  colonial  governors. 
Dinwiddie,  meanwhile,  was  trying  to  enlist  the  Indians,  j,^^  Indians 
and  Braddock  himself  wrote  to  Morris  of  Pennsylva-  '^"•'^used. 
nia,  in  the  hopes  that  the  tribes  in  that  province  who  had  lived 
on  the  Ohio  would  consent  to  join  him.  The  southern  Indians 
proved  averse  to  joining  the  expedition,  and  Dinwiddie  charged 
their  defection  upon  French  emissaries,  though  not  unlikely 
they  shared  Governor  Glen's  apprehension  of  raids  upon  their 
own  territory.  It  curiously  happened  that  Dinwiddle's  effort 
to  enlist  such  aid,  coming  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Six  Nations, 
they  also  held  back,  and  gave  for  a  reason  the  fear  of  awaking 
broils  with  their  old  southern  enemies,  if  they  embarked  on  the 
same  campaign  with  them.  So  it  seemed  likely  that  Braddock 
was  not  to  profit  much,  if  at  all,  by  the  Indian  aid.  It  has  been 
affirmed  that  he  showed  that  he  despised  their  assistance,  and 
so  alienated  them.  That  he  put  little  dependence  on  them  was 
very  likely  true,  but  he  certainly  endeavored  to  do  his  best  to 
placate  them,  though  he  had  little  success.    The  few  who  joined 


356  THE  ALLEGHANY  PORTALS. 

him  stole  away  when  he  wanted  them  most.  "  One  needs  the 
patience  of  an  angel  to  get  on  with  them,"  he  said,  and  the 
historical  student  who  to-day  tries  to  fathom  their  natures  in 
the  wearisome  records  of  Indian  councils  which  he  finds,  for 
instance,  in  the  Pennsylvania  Archives^  may  well  wonder  if 
anybody  who  treated  with  them  had  any  patience  left.  Un- 
foi"tunately  one  cannot  have  a  much  better  opinion  of  the 
whites  with  whom  the  Indians  dealt. 

It  was  on  April  14  that  the  governors  met  the  English  gen- 
eral at  Alexandria.  The  outcome  of  their  deliberation  was  a 
plan  to  give  simultaneous  alarm  at  all  the  points  which  Dinwid- 
dle and  Sharpe  had  wished  to  attack  in  succession.  Braddock 
was  to  march  upon  Duquesne,  Shirlej'^  upon  Niagara,  and 
Johnson  upon  Crown  Point,  while  New  England  was  to  keep 
the  Acadians  too  busy  for  them  to  afford  any  help  farther  west. 
If  all  went  well,  it  was  thought  not  unlikely  that  Braddock, 
meeting  Shirley  and  Pepperrell  at  Niagara,  would  be  able  to  go 
to  Johnson's  assistance  if  it  was  needed. 

The  character  of  Braddock,  moulded  by  more  than  forty 
Braddock's  years'  servicc  in  the  Coldstream  Guai-ds,  was  hardly 
character.  suited  to  the  environments  of  the  wilderness.  He  was 
only  lately  become  a  major-general,  having  been  gazetted  a  few 
months  before  he  was  assigned  to  the  American  field.  Those 
who  knew  him  best  never  doubted  his  courage  or  his  routine 
skill  as  a  soldier,  but  they  knew  him  to  be  desperately  immoral, 
easily  brutal,  and  obstinate  in  his  opinions.  A  variety  of  wit- 
nesses of  his  disposition  have  left  us  the  mosaics  of  his  charac- 
ter. Walpole  and  Mistress  Bellamy  gossip  about  him  as  they 
knew  him  in  England.  Shirley,  his  secretary,  had  no  admira- 
tion for  him.  Washington  saw  his  failings.  Franklin  thought 
him  disqualified  for  his  task.  The  Virginians  found  him  impe- 
rious, and  thought  him  little  open  to  the  experience  of  woods- 
men. He  somehow  easily  wounded  the  sensibilities  of  the  colo- 
nists, and  it  was  found  difficult,  with  such  a  man  in  command, 
to  hold  the  English  in  the  Virginia  regiment  to  the  coming 
task.  They  did  not  see  with  complacency  "  raw,  surly,  and 
tyrannical  Scots,"  who  were  creatures  of  Braddock,  taking  the 
places  which  belonged  to  them.  Maury  evidently  refers  to 
Braddock  when  he  speaks  of  the  rudeness  and  insolence  of  an 
officer  of  rank  which  were  not  resented  because  of  the  common 
cause. 


BRADDOCK'S    CAMPAIGN.  357 

There  was  certainly  much  in  what  Braddock  had  to  encoun- 
ter to  disgust  an  officer  accustomed,  as  he  was,  to  rigid  disci- 
pline and  accountability,  and  it  should  serve  in  some  degree  to 
exculpate  him.  lie  could  ill  brook  any  comparison  of  the  fron- 
tier ranger  with  his  redcoats.  The  refusal  of  the  Pennsylva- 
nians  to  make  his  efforts  easier  was  very  trying,  and  he  would 
doubtless  have  been  hardly  better  satisfied  with  Ncav  Eng- 
land men,  who  seemed  at  a  distance  to  be  his  ideal  of  what 
provincials  should  be.  It  has  been  the  custom  of  American 
writers  to  charge  the  dreadful  miscarriage  of  the  campaign 
upon  this  haughty  and  untactful  general,  and  he  very  likely  de- 
serves a  large  share  of  the  blame.  Kingsford,  the  latest  and 
best  Canadian  historian,  has  pushed  his  defense  of  Braddock  as 
far  as  it  will  bear,  if  not  farther,  in  denying  that  he  alienated 
the  Indians,  and  in  insisting  that  the  regulars  behaved  as  well 
in  the  fight  as  the  Virginians. 

In  Pennsylvania  the  Quakers  and  Germans  united  to  defeat 
all  measures  that  would  sustain  the  alien  general,  and 
it  was   only  the   personal   exertions  of  Franklin,  in  ma  and  the 
gathering  pack-horses  and  wagons,  that  produced  any 
assistance  at  all. 

In   May,  1755,  Contrecceur  had  completed  the  defense  of 
Duquesne.    He  had  made  a  log  fort,  with  walls  sixteen 
feet  thick.     Trunks  of  trees  were  placed  transversely,   at  du- 
with  a  parapet  above.     A  ditch  lined  the  walls  where  *^"^*°®' 
the  confluent  streams  did  not  protect  it. 

Braddock  was  now  at  Will's  Creek  on  the  Potomac.     Wash- 
ington had  joined  him  (May  16)  on  a  special  invita- 
tion to  act  as  aide.     The  Virginia  Assembly  had  at  wm-s 
last  been  brought  to  regard  the  support  of  the  cam- 
paign as  incumbent  on  them  as  Britons. 

Here  at  Fort  Cumberland  the  route  to  be  pursued  became  a 
question.  Early  in  the  year,  the  governor  of  Penn-  Braddock's 
sylvania  had  directed  the  survey  of  a  road  over  the  '°"'^' 
western  mountains  of  that  province  ;  but  it  jjrogressed  slowly, 
and  was  finally  stopped  when  Braddock  no  longer  needed  it.  It 
was  an  easier  route  than  that  to  the  Mononjrahela,  and  throusfh 
a  country  affording  better  supplies  ;  but  other  reasons  prevailed, 
and  the  passage  to  the  Youghiogheny,  which  Washington  had 


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360  THE  ALLEGHANY  PORTALS. 

already  roughly  laid  out,  was  preferred.  This  was  partly,  no 
doubt,  because  the  ulterior  advantage  to  Pennsylvania  from 
establishing  a  route  for  her  settlements  was  not  to  be  considered 
in  view  of  her  apathy  toward  the  expedition.  Perhaps  a  more 
cogent  reason  existed  in  the  influence  which  one  Hanbury,  a 
London  merchant  and  shareholder  in  the  Ohio  Company,  had 
over  the  weak  and  ignorant  Duke  of  Newcastle.  Hanbury  had 
no  hesitation  in  exercising  this  influence  for  the  benefit  of  the 
future  trade  of  that  company.  Washington,  from  his  experi- 
ence, naturally  favored  a  route  which  he  knew  the  best,  and 
Braddock  readily  acceded  to  his  aide's  advice.  It  was  thus 
along  a  route  which  in  the  main  corresponds  to  the  traveled 
highway  to-day,  that  Braddock's  van  penetrated  the  gap  four 
miles  west  of  Cumberland,  where  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  rail- 
way now  enters  the  mountains.  By  the  10th  of  June,  when 
Braddock's  ^^^^^  advaucc  was  made,  Braddock's  column  consisted 
advance.  ^£  ^bout  two  tliousaud  mcu.  Confident  that  scouting 
parties  of  the  enemy  could  slip  by  him,  the  general  had  advised 
Dinwiddle  to  warn  the  county  lieutenants.  The  Virginia  gov- 
ernor was  doing  his  best  to  arouse  enthusiasm ;  but 
ansand  the  responses  were  discouraging.  He  confessed  that 
nfan"*^^'*  hc  lougcd  for  the  spirit  which  since  the  days  of  Louis- 
bourg  the  colonists  had  generally  associated  with  the 
New  England  character.  He  knew  that  Shirley  was  fearful  of 
the  result  if  the  southern  colonies  did  not  show  more  alertness. 
When  every  fifth  man  in  Massachusetts  responded  in  1745, 
was  it  too  much  to  expect  of  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia  that 
every  tweKth  man  should  spring  to  his  feet  ?  This  was  Shir- 
ley's question  to  the  harassed  Dinwiddle. 

German  and  Quaker  and  tidewater  Virginian  evidently 
thought  the  question  impertinent,  and  Braddock  advanced  with 
less  assistance  than  he  should  have  had  from  the  colonies  at  his 
back. 

The  force  likely  to  be  encountered  was  no  doubt  unduly  ex- 
aggerated.     Contrecoeur's   forces  had    been  reduced 
coeur's  in   all  his  posts   to  less  than  four    hundred    during 

the  winter,  but  some  small  details  had  since  reached 
him,  probably  not  to  the  extent  that  Bradstreet,  at  Oswego,  had 
imagined.     This  officer  sent  a  warning  expi-ess   to  Braddock, 


BRADDOCK'S   CAMPAIGN.  361 

which  could  hardly  as  yet  have  reached  that  officer.  At  this 
time  there  were  really  in  Duquesne  a  few  companies  of  French 
regulars,  a  small  body  of  Canadians,  and  perhaps  eight  hundred 
Indians.  Some  of  these  latter  were  a  contingent  from  the 
tribes  of  the  northwest,  led  by  Charles  de  Langlade,  and  it  has 
been  said  that  Pontiac  was  among  them. 

Already  the  French  had  begun  to  withdraw  their  forces  from 
the   extreme  northwest,  and  during  the  ensuing  war 
their  flas*  was   nowhere  flvina"  beyond  Mackinac  ex-  nsons  at 

.  the  west. 

cept  at  the  Sault  Ste.  Marie.     They  had  left  a  small 
garrison  at  Fort  Chartres  on  the  Mississippi,  now  just  rebuilt 
in  substantial  style. 

It  is  certain  that  Contrecoeur  had  no  hopes  of  doing  more  than 
to  impede  the  British  march.     He  had,  in  fact,  not 
yet  received  the  detail  originally  intended  for  Presqu'  and  Beau- 
Isle,  which  Vaudreuil  had  ordered  to  Duquesne.     Beau- 
jeu,  a  subordinate  officer  under  Contrecoeur,  had  manifested  an 
eagerness  to  confront  the  approaching  enemy,  but  his  command- 
ing officer  was  averse  to  letting  him.      A  rush  of  volunteers 
at  once  showed  that  the  men  had  confidence  in  Beaujeu,  and  so 
he  was  permitted  to  lead  out  a  body  of  eight  or  nine  hundred 
men,  mostly  painted  Indians,  but  including  two  hundred  and 
more  regvilars  and  Canadians. 

Beaujeu  had  hoped  to  reach  the  ford  which  Braddock  must 
pass  in  season  to  secure  it.  In  this  he  failed,  but  at  a  piece  of 
hillocky  ground  along  a  defile,  masked  by  thick  leafage,  be  had 
just  time  to  dispose  his  men  before  the  pioneers  of  the  British 
were  startled  at  discovering  them. 

We  must  now  follow  Braddock's  approach.  He  had  left 
Colonel  Dunbar  some  distance  in  his  rear  with  a  force  Braddock's 
to  guard  his  trains.  Up  to  his  parting  with  Dunbar,  *°'*^^" 
his  advance  had  been  slow.  His  lumbering  army  had  stretched 
three  or  four  miles  along  a  narrow,  tortuous  road,  bristling 
with  stumps  and  half  cleared  of  stones.  There  was  a  motley 
show  of  the  red  Britisher  and  the  blue  Virginian.  There 
were  scattered,  clanking  cavalry  and  rumbling  guns.  His 
pioneers  stopped  to  build  bridges  and  level  mole-hills  where 
Washington  saw   little  need  of  it.      His  flanking  parties  did 


362  THE  ALLEGHANY  PORTALS. 

not  scour  so  thoroughly  but  that  the  enemy's  scouts  got  into 
his  camps. 

Leaving  Dunbar,  the  general  now  pushed  on  with  the  most 
available  part  of  his  army  in  light  order  and  in  fighting  trim. 
He  passed  unopposed  the  ford  where  Beaujeu  had  hoped  to  eon- 
front  him,  and  with  almost  an  air  of  parade  the  red  and  blue, 
with  their  canopy  of  glancing  steel,  moved  steadily  on  within 
the  fatal  defile. 

It  was  the  7th  of  July.  A  volley  at  the  front  showed  that 
The  fight  t^6  trial  had  come.  Gage,  the  later  general  of  the 
July?,  1755.  Jievolutionary  epoch,  was  in  advance,  and  wheeling 
his  guns  to  the  front,  their  booming  discharge  and  the  rattling 
volley  of  musketeers  threw  the  foe  at  first  into  confusion.  The 
French  leader,  Beaujeu,  fell.  The  Indians  scattered  and  the 
Canadians  wavered.  At  this  moment,  a  commander  on  the  Eng- 
lish side  such  as  Bouquet  later  proved  himself  to  be  might  have 
turned  this  hesitancy  of  the  enemy  into  a  rout.  The  Indians, 
never  easily  rallied  under  discouragement,  might  have  drawn  the 
French  into  flight.  Braddock  hastened  to  the  front,  and  the 
time  lost  in  arranging  a  line  and  massing  his  troops  in  an  order 
suited  to  open  spaces  gave  the  successor  of  Beaujeu  a  chance  to 
rally  his  men.  From  every  vantage-ground  of  rock  and  thicket, 
most  of  the  time  unseen,  the  French  and  their  Indians  poured 
into  the  thickened  British  ranks  such  ceaseless  and  irregular 
volleys,  that  the  ground  was  soon  so  strewn  with  the  dying  that 
the  tactical  movements  of  the  English  were  impeded.  Each 
Virginian  sought  the  shelter  of  a  tree,  and  used  up  his  powder 
upon  marksmen  as  unseen  as  himself.  Braddock  strove  hard  to 
keep  the  line  of  the  redcoats  steady,  but  it  was  in  vain.  He  had 
The  English  ^^^  ioxxY  liorscs  sliot  uudcr  him,  when  he  gave  orders 
^^-  for  falling  back.     Governor  Shirley's  son,  who  was  the 

general's  secretary,  was  killed.  Washington  barely  escaped  on 
the  third  horse  which  he  had  mounted.  Gage  and  Gates  were 
wounded.  Patrick  MacKeller,  the  chief  engineer,  was  more 
fortunate,  and  to  his  trained  eye  and  calm  observation  amid  it 
all  we  owe  the  plans  of  the  battle,  still  existing,  which  are  so 
necessary  in  comprehending  it. 

There  could  be  no  more  trying  ordeal  for  European  troops 
than  the  incessant  cracking  of  shots,  with  a  man  falling  for 
each,  and  no  one  to  be  seen  behind  the  white  puff.     Just  as  the 


DEATH  OF  BRADDOCK.  363 

recoil  was  most  confused,  the  general  was  struck  from  his  liorse, 
and  AVashington  was  left  in  command.  The  young  American 
tried  to  prevent  the  retreat  from  becoming  a  disordered  rout 
The  attempt  was  useless.  There  was  a  headlong,  bewildering 
scamper  for  the  rear.  The  mass  bore  everybody  along.  It  was 
nothing  but  a  dispirited  rabble  surging  before  an  infuriated 
horde  of  savages.  In  this  way  the  fugitives,  in  wild  confusion, 
enveloped  the  guard  which  was  bearing  off  the  dying  Braddock. 
The  ford  which  had  been  crossed  so  confidently  was  regained. 
Only  when  the  wearied  survivors  huddled  together  for  a  while 
on  the  other  side  of  the  river  was  there  a  moment  of  respite. 
No  attempt  was  made  by  the  victors  to  pass  the  stream  and 
harass  the  flying  English  longer  ;  but  savage  and  French  scat- 
tered themselves  along  the  defile  and  slopes,  robbing  the  dead 
and  despoiling  the  dying. 

What  there  was  left  of  this  shamefully  defeated  army,  now 
that  the  river  was  between  them  and  their  enemy,  and 
a  brief  respite  had  followed,  was  soon  hurried  once 
more  into  a  mad  precipitancy,  which  showed  little  abatement  till 
Dunbar's  camp  was  reached.  This  officer,  now  assuming  com- 
mand, seems  never  to  have  given  a  thought  to  the  possibility  of 
intrenching  himself,  that  he  might  save  his  supplies  and  dispirit 
Contrecoeur  enough  to  prevent  his  planning  other  movements. 
On  the  contraiy,  this  Scottish  colonel  ordered  the  immediate 
destruction  of  his  wagons  and  stores,  and  then  led  the  miserable 
runaways  in  further  flight. 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  this  desperation  that  the  almost  speech- 
less Braddock  died.     They  buried  him  in  the  road,  so 
that  his  men  could  trample  out  the  signs  of  his  grave.   <Jies,  and  is 
It  was  not  till  the  fugitives  reached   Fort  Cumber- 
land, that  there  we  re  returning  signs  of  composure.     Even  then 
Dunbar  was  too  agitated  to   do  his  palpable  duty,  and  hurried 
on  to  Philadelphia,  leaving  the  Virginians  to  defend  what  was 
now  the  most  exposed  of  the  English  posts. 

So  the  first  battle  of  the   English  in  the  Great  Valley  had 
been  fought,  with  this  dismal  result.     Three  fourths  ^he  English 
of  the  officers  had  been  killed  or  disabled  and  two  ^°^®' 
thirds  of  the  men,  an  average  of  not  much  short  of  two  for  each 
contestant  ou  the  other  side. 


364  THE  ALLEGHANY  PORTALS. 

France,  witli  no  one  left  to  oppose  her,  had  for  a  time  at 
least  made  good  her  hold  upon  the  broad  areas  beyond  the 
mountains.  Her  control  extended  everywhere  to  the  ridge  of 
the  Alleghanies,  except  at  one  point.  The  little  settlement  at 
Draper's  Meadows  stiU  contained  its  sturdy  company 
Meadows  of  loyal  Scotch-Irisli,  guarding  the  sources  of  the  Ka- 
nawha ;  but  on  the  day  following  the  defeat  of  Brad- 
dock,  a  party  of  Shawnees  had  fallen  upon  it  and  carried  off 
some  of  the  women.  It  was  the  first  of  a  direful  series  of 
murderous  raids  along  the  luckless  frontiers  of  Virginia  and 
Pennsylvania.  The  furious  savages  now  pushed  over  the 
outer  mountains,  and  at  times  ravaged  the  banks  of  the  Cow- 
pasture  River. 

The  earliest  acknowledgment  of   Braddock's  defeat  was  in 
a  circular  which  Colonel  Innes  sent  by  express  from 

News  of  the      -r^  r^         i        i        -i  th-(  .^j. 

defeat  1^  ort  Cumberland  on  July  11,  four  days  after  the  bat- 

spreads.  1         m  •  • 

tie.    Two  days  later,  he  dispatched  further  particulars 

to  both  Sharpe  and  Dinwiddie.  The  latter  got  his  first  tidings 
on  the  14th,  the  very  day  on  which  Shirley  and  Johnson  at  the 
north  were  congratulating  themselves  that  Fort  Duquesne  must 
have  fallen.  Orme,  one  of  Braddock's  staff,  sent  off  a  letter 
from  Fort  Cumberland  on  the  18th,  and  a  copy  of  this,  sent 
north  by  Sharpe,  was  in  Governor  Hopkins's  hands  in  Rhode 
Island  on  August  2,  and  it  was  not  far  into  August  before 
the  chief  centres  of  colonial  life  along  the  seaboard  were  in- 
formed of  the  disaster.  Naturally,  it  was  known  in  England 
before  the  French  government  heard  of  it,  and  intelligence  from 
over  the  Channel  reached  Paris  on  September  5,  about  two 
months  after  the  event. 

The  victory  caused  hilarious  excitement  at  Duquesne,  as  we 
j.gggtat  know  from  the  testimony  of  an  English  prisoner  con- 
Duquesne.  fij^ed  there,  but  it  was  followed  by  a  period  of  trepida- 
tion, when  it  was  feared  that  the  British  would  recover,  and 
with  Dunbar's  reserve  advance  again.  What  rendered  the  sit- 
uation worse  was  the  difficulty  of  communicating  with  Canada, 
and  a  little  later  such  tidings  as  they  got  at  the  forks  were  far 
from  assuring,  for  the  wheat  crop  had  failed  on  the  St.  Law- 
rence, and  last  year's  store  was  brutally  used  to  exact  money 
from  the  people.    Montcalm,  on  hearing  from  Duquesne,  during 


WASHINGTON  ON   THE  BORDERS.  365 

the  autumn,  desci'ibed  the  fort  as  "  not  worth  a  straw,  and  as 
having-  been  recently  nearly  swept  away  by  a  freshet."  All 
this  time,  while  the  English  leaders  were  getting  nothing  but 
harrowing  details  from  the  frontiers,  they  might  have  taken 
some  heart,  could  they  have  known  the  truth.  In  the  latter 
part  of  October,  Sharpe  was  complaining  that  they  had  not 
been  able  to  learn  anything  about  the  condition  of  Duquesne. 

The  months  immediately  following  Braddock's  defeat  were 
very  anxious  ones  for  the  English.  The  direful  catas-  j,,g  borders 
trophe  had  let  loose  a  fiendish  swarm  of  savages  along  '■''"^«'^- 
the  borders.  The  Dinwiddle  and  Sharpe  letters  and  the  numer- 
ous reports  from  local  observers,  which  are  preserved  in  the 
printed  volumes  of  the  Pennsylvania  Archives  and  Records^ 
show  us  the  gloom  of  the  hour.  The  anxiety  was  mixed  with 
bitterness  at  the  ijusillanimous  conduct  of  Dunbar,  in  sacrificing 
the  munitions  which  had  cost  them  so  dearly. 

Washington  was  soon  put  in  command  of  a  regiment  of  bor- 
derers at  Winchester  in  the  Shenandoah  valley.  Cap- 
tain Lewis's  journal  of  his  march  with  these  troops  iu'thevaiiey 
reveals  the  number  of  deserted  houses  throughout  that  "^  "^s"**^- 
region,  whose  occupants  had  fled  before  the  Indian  prowlers. 
It  needed  all  of  Washington's  alertness,  with  the  activity  of 
his  patrols,  and  the  vicinage  of  Dinwiddle's  fort  on  Jackson 
River,  to  keep  this  country  along  the  eastern  foot  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies  within  the  pale  of  frontier  life. 

North  of  the  Potomac  matters  were  even  worse.     The  Dela- 
wares,  centring  at  Kittanning  on  the  Alleghany,  were  ^he  hostile 
crossing  the    mountains  in    hordes,  and    skipping  in  i>eiawares. 
fiendish  fury  from  hamlet  to  hamlet.     Andrew  Montour  was 
sent  to  the  Great  Island  on  the  west  branch  of  the   Susque- 
hanna to  appease  the  Indians,  and  forestall  the  French  in  their 
evident  purpose  to  seize  Shamokin  (now  Sunbury)  and  make  it 
the  centre  of  French  influence  in  this  region.     Conrad  Weiser 
had  his  scouts  out  to  watch  their  movements,  and  at  one  time 
he  reported  that  with  their  French  allies,  not  less  devilish  than 
they,  fifteen  hundred  savages  were  pouring  upon  the  side  valleys 
along  the  Juniata  and  the  west  branches  of  the  Susquehanna. 
Among  the  Mohawks,  Johnson   was   endeavoring  to  ^he  iro- 
make    the   Iroquois    maintain   their    supremacy  over  'i""'^' 
these  Alleghany  tribes  and  check  their  incursions,  but  with  little 


366  THE  ALLEGHANY  PORTALS. 

success ;  nor  was  he  more  prosperous  in  trying  to  make  the  ren- 
egade neophytes  at  Caughnawaga  remain  neutral. 

The  protection  of  the  border  in  Pennsylvania  was  much  com- 
plicated by  an  untimely  quarrel  of  the  assembly  with 
p^nnsyiva^    the  Proprietaries  of  the  province.     These  grandsons 
^^'  of  William  Penn  had  few  of  his  winning  traits.     The 

peaceful  tenets  of  the  Quakers  were  also  hard  to  overcome. 
"  There  is  so  great  a  majority  of  Quakers  in  the  house,"  wrote 
Governor  Morris,  "  that  no  warlike  preparations  are  to  be  ex- 
pected from  them,  being,  as  they  pretend,  contrary  to  their  prin- 
ciples ; "  and  it  seemed  for  a  while  as  if  the  Scotch-Irish  and 
the  Germans  among  them,  who  constituted  the  adventurous 
settlers  of  the  west,  were  to  be  left  to  their  fate  by  the  sluggish 
Quakers  of  the  east.  Franklin  suspected  "  that  the  defense  of 
The  Quaker  ^hc  couutry  was  uot  disagrccablc  to  any  of  them,  pro- 
eiement.  yidcd  tlicy  wcrc  uot  required  to  assist  in  it."  He  gives 
us  an  amusing  instance  of  the  way  in  which  they  finally  con- 
sented to  participate  in  the  common  zeal,  by  voting  allowances 
"  for  wheat  and  other  grain,"  whose  kernels  they  expected  to  be 
interpreted  to  mean  powder.  As  matters  grew  worse,  the  assem- 
bly was  at  last  induced  to  grant,  "  as  aid  to  the  crown,"  an  appro- 
priation of  fifty  thousand  pounds  to  be  assessed  as  a  tax  on  all 
estates.  The  Proprietaries  demurred,  as  this  would 
with  the  include  their  own  reserved  territory  within  the  prov- 
ince. The  assembly  would  not  retreat,  and  it  was 
finally  compromised  by  placing  the  Proprietaries'  liability  at 
five  thousand  pounds. 

But  there  was  something  more  than  money  necessary,  and 
Franklin  was  doing  the  best  he  could  to  arouse  a  martial  spirit. 
In  November,  when  even  New  Jersey,  east  of  the  Delaware,  had 
become  uneasy,  and  the  mayor  and  j)rincipal  citizens  of  Phila- 
delphia were  not  without  apprehension,  as  new  incursions  were 
reported  from  the  north,  Franklin  was  enabled  to  overcome  the 
Quaker  repugnance  and  secure  the  passage  in  the 
nia  militia  asscuibly  of  a  militia  act  of  no  great  stringency.  If 
any  still  held  that  the  trans- Alleghany  country,  being 
the  crown's,  was  no  concern  of  theirs,  they  could  agree  with 
Franklin  that  now,  at  least,  the  colony  itself  was  attacked.  It 
was  no  longer  a  question  of  protecting  British  trade,  but  of  the 


WILLFAM  SHIRLEY.  3G7 

preservation  of  tlieir  own  lives.  They  saw  all  this  in  the  flocks 
of  settlers  coming  into  York  from  the  distant  and  demoralized 
Cumberland  County,  and  in  the  bewildered  families 

,  .    ,    -»Tr    •  1  •  (•  1  •  Frontier  aet- 

whicn  VV  eiser  was  conduetmq;  from  over  the  mountains  tiers  driven 

back 

within  the  protecting  lines  of  the  inner  forts.     The 
valley  of  the   Juniata  had   become  almost   entirely  deserted. 
Maury  tells  us  that  it  was  short  work  in  these  painf  id  months  to 
withdraw  the  border  settlements  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  thus 
interposing  a  desert  on  the  English  side  of  the  Alleghany  portals. 

We  have  seen  that  while  Braddock  was  following  the  Monon- 
gahela,  it  had  been  expected  that  along  the  shores  of 
the  Lakes  other  aggressive  movements  would  secure  an  paign'at  the 
entrance  to  the  Ohio  valley  in  the  north. 

As  early  as  January,  1755,  Shirley  had  matured  plans  for 
attacking  Crown  Point  and  invading  Canada,  —  a  scheme  which 
would  have  seriously  afPected  the  French  purpose  on  the  Ohio. 
He  presented  this  scheme  to  the  council  at  Alexandria,  which 
modified  it  so  far  as  to  divide  the  movement,  Johnson  undertak- 
ing the  attack  along  Lake  Champlain,  while  Shirley  himself  was 
to  assault  Niagara!  Shirley's  route  lay  from  Albany  Niagara 
to  Schenectady,  up  the  Mohawk  by  boat,  making  a  ™^"^*=«*i- 
portage  at  Fort  Stanwix  to  Wood's  Creek.  Thence  he  was  to 
find  his  way  to  Oswego  by  the  traders'  route,  and  on  the  lake 
he  was  to  gather  a  flotilla  and  skirt  the  shore  to  Niagara. 

Shirley  and  Johnson  were  at  Albany  when  the  news  of  Brad- 
dock's  defeat  reached  them,  and  fearing  its  effect  upon  their 
own  men,  they  tried  for  a  while  to  conceal  the  tidings.  The 
death  of  Braddock  had  made  Shirley  the  ranking  officer  on 
the  continent,  but  he  did  not  receive  his  new  commission  till 
the  season's  work  was  at  an  end.  His  elevation  was  not  fortu- 
nate, and  Hutchinson  tells  us  that  "  friends  saw  the  Shirley's 
risk  he  was  running,  and  wished  he  had  contented  '^^^''^'^^c'e''. 
himself  with  a  civic  station."  His  friends  were  wise.  His 
career  had  been  a  striking,  and  in  many  ways  a  successful  one, 
and  he  shared  with  Pepperrell  the  glories  of  Louisbourg.  His 
diplomatic  career  at  Paris  had  brought  him  credit,  and  he  had 
been  linked  with  his  Louisbourg  associate  as  the  two  native 
leaders  for  the  royal  American  regiments.  His  merits,  how- 
ever, were  those  of  a  politician,  and  not  of  a  soldier.     In  some 


368  THE  ALLEGHANY  PORTALS. 

ways  he  "  knew  how  to  stoop  to  what  he  understood,"  and  he 
had  faculties  which  gained  the  respect  of  Franklin,  but  at  the 
same  time  there  was  a  certain  light  air  about  him  which  Parkman 
calls  "  an  element  of  boyishness."  His  career  has  never  been 
adequately  studied. 

Unfortunately,  he  and  Johnson  were  not  in  accord,  and  mu- 
tual jealousies  perplexed  their  common  aims.    Johnson 

His  disputes  ,  p    i  •         '       ^1       ,i  i  -i  i 

with  John-  spokc  oi  his  rival  s  "  causeless  jealousy  and  unmer- 
ited resentment,"  and  wrote  bitter  complaints  to  the 
Lords  of  Trade.  On  the  whole,  Shirley,  who  had  pushed  John- 
son into  the  paths  of  military  glory,  secures  our  sympathy  in 
the  quarrel,  though  he  was  less  prudent  than  usual  in  inter- 
andDe  fcriug  with  Johuson's  power  as  superintendent  of 
Lancey.  ^j^g  Indians.  De  Lancey,  a  politician  of  a  type  pro- 
duced by  evil  days,  did  also  what  he  could  to  embitter  Shirley's 
existence. 

It  was  in  March  (1755)  that  the  English  government  an- 
French  and  Qounced  in  Parliament  that  a  French  war  was  inevita- 
pr"e|arations  ^^^'  I*  ^^^  Icamcd  that  the  French  were  equipping 
for  war,  g^  large  naval  force  at  Brest  and  Rochelle,  and  that  an 
attendant  fleet  of  transports  was  to  carry  an  army  under  Dies- 
kau  to  Quebec.  It  mattered  little  that  the  two  countries  were 
preserving  the  formal  intercourse  of  peace,  and  on  April  27, 
Admiral  Boscawen,  possessed  of  an  understanding  of  the  cabi- 
net's wishes,  rather  than  committed  to  instructions,  put  to  sea  in 
order  to  intercept  the  French  armament.  A  week  later  (May  3), 
the  French  fleet  was  on  its  way,  taking  not  only  the  new  gen- 
eral, but  a  new  governor,  Vaudreuil,  to  succeed  Duquesne.  Two 
only  of  the  French  ships  fell  into  Boscawen's  hands.  Conse- 
quently, by  June  19,  the  safe  arrival  of  the  rest  of  the  fleet 
added  three  thousand  French  regidars  to  the  thousand  already 
at  Quebec.  This  made  a  pretty  effective  addition  to  the  eight 
thousand  militia  which  Canada  was  drilling  for  the  campaign. 

During  the  spring,  Johnson  was  doing  the  best  he  could  to 

hold  the  Iroquois  steady  in  their  allegiance,  and  no 

and  the         doubt  Spending  wisely  the  ten  thousand  pounds  with 

roquois.        -^yhich  hc   had  been    intrusted  for  that  purpose.     In 

this  business  he  was   at  his  best,  and  his  twenty  years  in  the 

Mohawk  country  looking  after  the  landed  interests  of  his  uncle, 


BATTLE   OF  LAKE   GEORGE.  369 

Sir  Peter  Warren,  —  the  same  who  commanded  the  fleet  that 
helped  Pepperrell  at  Louisbom-g,  —  had  thoroughly  schooled 
him  in  the  arts  o£  Indian  diplomacy. 

During  the  summer  at  Albany,  he  had  been  busy  organizing 
the  forces  which  he  was  to  lead  against  Crown  Point. 
General  Phineas  Lyman,  of  Connecticut,  his  second  Point  expe- 
in  command,  had  built  a  fort  at  the   carrying  place 
towards  the  lake,  and  this  post  was  made  the  base  of  opera- 
tions.    There  were  among  Johnson's  other  trusted  lieutenants 
not  a  few  who  were  later  famous  in  this  and  the  Revolution- 
ary war,  —  Israel    Putnam,  John    Stark,   Seth    Pomeroy,  and 
Ephraim  Williams  among  them. 

Dieskau  moved  up  Lake  Champlain,  and  was  preparing  to 
attack  the  fort  which  Lyman  had  built.  It  was  now  Septem- 
ber (1755),  and  the  impending  struggle  was  to  decide  if  the 
English  were  to  be  driven  back  to  Schenectady  and  Albany  by 
a  disaster  equal  to  that  by  which  they  had  recoiled  to  Fort 
Cumberland  on  the  Potomac. 

Hendricks,  the  Mohawk,  and  Williams,  the  founder  of  the 
college  of  that  name,  were  in  command  of  a  flying  camp,  watch- 
ing the  French  advance.  The  French  planned  an  ambush  and 
enticed  this  too  unwary  body  into  it.  The  suffering  of  the  de- 
ceived party  was  for  a  while  much  like  that  which  Braddock 
had  experienced  on  the  Monongahela,  ♦but  a  vigilant  woods- 
man, Nathan  Whiting  of  Connecticut,  finally  extricated  the 
English,  after  Williams  and  the  friendly  chief  had  fallen. 
Whiting  did  more,  for  he  managed  to  keep  the  eager  foe  suffi- 
ciently long  in  restraint  for  Johnson,  who  was  near  the  head 
of  Lake  George,  to  build  a  barricade  of  wagons  and  boats.  It 
was  in  an  onset  against  this  improvised  bulwark  that 
the  French  general  soon  found  his  match.  The  re-  Lake 
pulse  was  steady  and  vigorous.  Johnson  was  early 
wounded  and  borne  fi-om  the  field.  Lyman,  who  succeeded  to 
the  command,  turned  the  repulse  into  a  rout.  Dieskau  was  left 
on  the  field  sorely  but  not  mortally  wounded,  but  the  great 
body  of  his  troops  managed  to  fly  beyond  pursuit. 

Johnson's  opportunity  was  to  have  permitted  so  good  a  leader 
as  Lyman  had  proved  himself  to  be  to  deal  a  finishing  joh^son  and 
stroke  by  advancing  upon  the  disorganized  fugitives,   ^y™''"- 
Perhaps  he  turned  from  the  chance    through  something  like 


370  THE  ALLEGHANY  PORTALS. 

that  jealousy  which  he  saw  so  readily  in  Shirley.  Lyman's 
friends  long  contended  that  it  was  a  base  spirit  in  Johnson 
which  prompted  him  later  to  take  Lyman's  name  from  the 
defensive  works  which  the  Connecticut  soldier  had  built,  and 
bestow  upon  it  that  of  Fort  Edward.  Johnson's  friends  assert 
that  it  was  more  prudent  for  him  to  give  over  a  pursuit  and 
fortify  the  head  of  the  lake  by  building  what  became  known  as 
Fort  William  Henry.  This  defense  was  placed  so  as  to  guard 
what  Johnson  now  rechristened  Lake  George,  after  the  English 
king,  an  appellation  which  easily  supplanted  the  original  name 
given  by  the  French. 

Here,  on  September  11,  he  held  a  conference  with  the  In- 
dians, and  for  some  weeks  he  was  busy  with  these 
holds  a          interviews,  giving  time  for  the  French  to  strengthen 
September'    thcmselvcs  at  Ticoudcroga.    The  two  armies  were  thus 

11   1755.  .  . 

left  facing  each  other  in  intrenchments,  from  the 
opposite  ends  of  the  lake,  but  on  November  27  Johnson  with- 
winter  drcw  the  main  part  of  his  forces  to  Albany  for  winter 
quarters.        quarters. 

The  battle  of  Lake  George,  if  not  all  that  it  might  have 
Johnson  a  bccu,  was  a  chccry  contrast  to  the  miserable  failure 
baronet.  near  Fort  Duquesne,  and  Johnson  was  the  fortunate 
recipient  of  a  baronetcy  and  a  grant  of  five  thousand  pounds. 
Shirley's  friends  claimed  that  this  money  was  simply  subtracted 
from  the  grant  which  Parliament  had  made  for  the  war,  and  so 
diminished  the  resources  which  could  give  it  vigor. 

Meanwhile,  Shirley  had  reaped  no  laurels  for  his  military 
Shirley's  ambition.  Bi-addock's  papers,  taken  in  the  fight,  had 
failure.  rcvcalcd  Sliii'lcy's  intended  attack  on  Niagara,  and 
though  there  were  many  delays  in  the  movements  of  Contre- 
coeur,  from  his  needless  fear  of  Dunbar  and  from  his  intercepted 
communications,  Shirley  was  so  conscious  that  the  French  could 
effectually  reinforce  the  point  of  his  intended  attack  that  he 
became  timid.  In  August,  he  learned  from  spies  that  no  troops 
had  yet  arrived  at  Niagara  from  Duquesne.  He  dallied  at 
Oswego  till  the  season  of  gales  on  the  lake  was  impending, 
and  on  September  27  he  and  his  council  of  war  decided  to 
abandon  the  campaign.  In  October,  Shirley  and  his  men  were 
back  in  Albany. 


A    DISASTROUS    YEAR.  371 

A  hesitating  action,  induced  very  likely  in  part  by  the  unsym- 
pathetic relations  of  the  two  northern  commanders,  and  in- 
creased, it  is  probable,  from  the  setback  which  Braddock  had 
received,  and  from  the  dilatory  support  of  the  colonial  legisla- 
tures, had  made  the  year,  on  the  whole,  a  disastrous  The  year 
one  for  the  English.  The  French,  with  the  aim  of  f^lXe""^ 
driving  their  enemies  out  of  the  two  great  valleys,  had  ^"gi'^h. 
practically  succeeded.  The  little  hamlet  at  Draper's  Meadows 
and  the  posts  at  Lake  George  and  Oswego  still  indeed  remained 
in  English  hands ;  but  there  was  little  hope  now  of  barrier  col- 
onies, and  a  plan  which  Samuel  Hazard  outlined,  and  which  the 
Connecticut  assembly  fostered,  of  a  new  colony  beyond  the  con- 
fines of  Pennsylvania,  and  extending  beyond  the  Mississippi, 
vanished  in  the  air.  Franklin's  hopes  of  a  Pennsylvania  col- 
ony on  Lake  Erie,  and  a  Virginia  one  by  the  Ohio,  had  passed 
into  the  limbo  of  forgotten  things.  The  forty  miles'  breadth  of 
bottom  lands  which  lined  the  course  of  the  Scioto  was  to  be  left 
to  blossom  under  a  new  government  in  the  next  century. 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

TWO    DISMAL   YEARS,    1756,  1757. 

The  year  1756  opened  with  the  French  holding  the  English 
Plans  for  a  ^*  arm's  length  from  the  sources  of  the  Ohio.  Early 
paign.'*'"  ^^  December  (1755),  Shirley  had  been  confirmed  in 
1756.  jjjg  position  as  commander-in-chief  by  the   receipt  of 

his  commission.  A  few  days  later,  he  held  a  council  of  war  at 
New  York,  and  laid  before  it  the  royal  instructions.  These 
outlined  a  plan  of  campaign  not  greatly  unlike  that  of  the  pre- 
vious year,  which  had  so  woefully  miscarried.  Troops  were  to 
be  gathered  at  Will's  Creek,  to  confront  the  force  which  it 
was  supposed  France  would  send  up  the  Mississippi  to  defend 
Duquesne.  Indeed,  Franldin,  who  had  now  been  commissioned 
to  defend  the  frontiers  of  Pennsylvania,  was  confident  that  the 
main  French  purpose  was  to  carry  the  war  into  that  province. 
Another  army  was  to  gain  Niagara  and  the  Lakes  and  secure 
this  entrance  to  the  Ohio  valley,  while  ships  were  to  be  built  to 
patrol  Lake  Ontario.  Shirley  pointed  out  that  Oswego  must 
be  held  at  all  hazards,  for  he,  better  than  those  to  whom  he  later 
resigned  the  control,  understood  how  it  was  the  key  of  the 
Oswego.  northern  route.  He  anticipated  perfectly  just  what 
175G.  jjjj^i  happen,  —  that  its  fall  would  push  the  English 

frontiers  back  upon  Schenectady,  if  not  upon  Albany.  To  re- 
tain Oswego  meant  to  Shirley  an  attack  on  Frontenac,  which 
his  displacement  put  off  for  two  years.  Success  at  Frontenac 
was  to  be  followed  by  a  movement  upon  Mackinac,  and  Shirley 
estimated  that  a  force  of  six  thousand  men  would  carry  out  this 
part  of  the  campaign.  Half  as  many,  with  the  aid  of  the  south- 
ern Indians,  he  thought  would  secure  Duquesne  ;  and  another 
six  thousand  were  enough  to  succeed  at  Crown  Point.  New 
England  would  take  care  of  a  feint  upon  Quebec  by  the  Chau- 
diere,  for  which  two  thousand  troops  would  suffice. 

The  scheme  was  brilliant  enough  to  animate  Shirley's  martial 


THE  FRONTIERS.  373 

ambition,  and  Governor  Belcher  might  well  hope,  if  it  were 
successful,  that  "  Canada  would  be  rooted  out." 

To  organize  such    a  complicated  undertaking  kept  Shirley 
busy  for  the  winter  in  Boston,  while  his  old  rival,  Johnson,  act- 
ing under  Shirley's  instructions,  was  endeavoring  to  check  the 
Indian  ravages  which  still  continued  along  the  Susque- 
hanna and  the  Juniata.     Franklin,  at  the  same  time,   Penns^yiVa^ 
had  every  occasion  for  his  activity  in  pushing  forward 
defenders   and   their   supplies.      Teedyuscung,   the   Delaware 
leader,  was  still  defiant,  and  nothing  that  Johnson  could    do 
was  able  for  a  time  to  induce  the  Iroquois  to  interpose  as  a 
shield  for  the  whites.     The  Senecas  absolutely  refused,  and  the 
Delawares  were  satisfied  with  the  opportunity  of  unpetticoating 
themselves,  as  their  Indian  phraseology  went.     The  jheDeia- 
spring,  with  its  uncertainties,  led  the   Pennsylvania  ^^"^^war. 
government  to  a  declaration  of  war,  while  Teedyuscung  main- 
tained himself,  both  with  the  Six  Nations  and  the  English,  in  a 
way  to  show  how  he  stood  on  a  vantage-ground. 

The  Pennsylvania  government,  despite  the  lukewarmness  of ' 
the  Quaker  assembly,  established  a  line  of  palisaded  frontier 
posts  from  the  Delaware  to  the  new  road  which  had  ^°'^*^"  /^ 

been  opened  to  the  mountains.  About  eight  hundred  men  were 
scattered  among  these  forts  as  garrisons,  while  patrols  were 
kept  skirring  about  in  the  interspaces.  As  a  sort  of  base  for 
these  operations,  a  new  fort  was  built  at  Shamokin,  where  the 
two  main  branches  of  the  Susquehanna  met.  These  enterprises 
had  about  used  up  the  sixty  thousand  pounds  raised  on  the 
credit  of  the  province.  They  had  also  given  the  Delawai-es 
new  grounds  for  apprehensions  lest  these  military  structures  had 
put  new  liens  on  their  territory.  It  was  a  current  belief  that 
this  fresh  discontent  was  fostered  "  by  vile,  rascally  deserters, 
Irish  Roman  Catholics,  who  were  employed  by  the  French." 

Along  the  Potomac  and  south  of  it,  Sharpe  and  Dinwiddle 
were  scheming  to  keep  up  the  courage  of  the  people. 
The  conditions  were  not  inspiring.     There  was  a  space  land  and  ' 
of  two  hundred  miles  between  the  tolerably  settled   frontiers. 

1756 

tidewater  countiy  and  the  scattered  hamlets  of  a  fron- 
tier three  hundred  miles  in  extent.     Here  Washington  was  try- 
ing to  organize  a  defense  against  a  persistent  horde  of  invaders. 


374  TWO  DISMAL    YEARS,   1756,   1757. 

He  was  only  able  to  promise  his  i-angers  and  garrisons  eight- 
pence  a  day  against  the  eighteenpence  which  the  same  service 
received  in  Pennsylvania.  Such  a  disparity  of  remuneration 
Dinwiddle's  ^^^  ^^^  prcvcut  Diuwiddic  wishing  that  the  Pennsyl- 
views.  vanians  would  become  as  ardent  bushfighters  as  his 

Virginians.  Nevertheless,  the  173,318  whites  in  Dinwiddie's 
province  did  far  less  than  his  zeal  wished  of  them.  He  himself 
labored  to  hold  the  Cherokees  fast  in  their  alliance.  It  had 
long  been  a  pet  belief  of  the  Virginian  governor  that  a  line  of 
fortified  posts  from  Crown  Point  to  the  Creek  country  was  of 
the  first  importance,  and  he  would  have  them  built  and  main- 
tained by  a  tax  imposed  by  Parliament.  The  Albany  plan  of 
union  having  failed,  Pennsylvania  had  taken  up  the  undertaking 
on  her  own  soil,  under  Franklin's  urgency.  It  had  been  found 
that  the  Indians  had  learned  from  the  French  the  art  of  firing 
stockades.  So  Sharpe  of  Maryland  had  continued  the  line  be- 
FortFred-  youd  Fort  Cumberland  by  planting  Fort  Frederick 
erick.  1756.  ^^  ^j^g  North  Mountain,  near  the  Potomac,  and  spent 
something  like  a  thousand  pounds  in  making  it  of  masonry,  — 
not  altogether  without  inciting  charges  of  extravagance.  There 
were  two  hundred  men  put  in  it,  and  an  equal  number  of  men 
The  Virginia  I'angiug  bcyoud  it.  On  the  Virginia  border.  Wash- 
forts.  1756.  i^o;ton  had  been  instructed  to  run  a  line  of  stockaded 
posts,  twenty  or  thirty  miles  apart,  southward  from  Fort  Din- 
widdie,  to  depend  on  a  fortified  magazine,  which,  during  the 
summer,  he  built  at  Winchester.  These  forts  were  convenient 
rally ing-points ;  but  they  were  much  too  far  asunder  to  guard 
the  contiguous  valleys  from  hostile  depredators. 

In  February,  Dinwiddie  was  hoping  that  Shirley's  plan  of  an 

advance  from  Fort  Cumberland  would  be  attempted. 
prepara-^       He  was  Urging  Morris  of  Pennsylvania,  now  occupied 

with  establishing  his  fortified  barriers,  to  place  one  of 
them  at  least  beyond  the  mountains.  Washington,  taking  ad- 
vantage of  a  lull  in  the  enemy's  movements,  had  gone  to  Bos- 
ton to  consult  with  Shirley.  He  was  directed  on  his  way  back 
to  confer  with  Morris  in  Philadelphia,  and  see  if  some  plan  of 
concerted  action  among  the  southern  colonies  could  not  be  en- 
tered upon.  Shirley  figured  out  what  the  quota  of  these  colo- 
nies would  be  under  the  schedule  of  1754,  and  found  it  to  be 
7,284  men.    Of  these  he  thought  4,000  might,  with  the  aid  of  a 


THE   FRONTIERS. 
[From  Pouchot's  Memoire  de  la  derniere  Guerre.] 


376  TWO  DISMAL    YEARS,  1756,  1757. 

thousand  Cherokees  be  employed  against  Fort  Duquesne,  while 
the  rest  would  do  better  service  north  in  severing  the  French 
communications  with  the  Ohio.  Dinwiddie  was  at  the  same 
time  urging  upon  the  Lords  of  Trade  his  plan  of  fortifying 
the  mountain  passes.  No  peace  could  be  had,  he  was  sure,  till 
the  French  were  expelled  from  the  Ohio,  and  he  recommended 
that  a  Protestant  colony  should  be  maintained  as  a  barrier  on 
the  Ohio  lands.  The  German  and  Irish  Roman  Catholics  of 
Pennsylvania  and  Maryland  were  seldom  in  his  mind  but  as 
hostile  aliens.  It  was  reckoned  that  at  this  time  there  were 
twelve  hundred  Catholics  in  Pennsylvania  of  an  age  to  take  the 
sacraments. 

In  March,  Shirley  had  commissioned  Sharpe  to  head  an  at- 
Attack  t^ck  on  the  forks  of  the  Ohio,  or  at  least  to  make  a 
Du^esne?  divcrsion  in  that  direction.  The  movement  gave  Din- 
1756.  widdie  encouragement  in  his  despondency,  for  he  was 

eager  for  something  to  be  done,  and  yet  was  not  confident  of 
success.  He  feared  that  Dumas,  now  in  charge  of  Duquesne, 
had  been  reinforced  from  the  Mississippi,  and  some  time  later 
was  reporting  that  a  thousand  men  had  come  to  its  assistance 
from  the  Wabash.  Still,  an  advance  would  create  a  diversion, 
which  would  prevent  Dumas's  aiding  Niagara,  and  leave  the 
northern  task  easier.  Dumas  was  doing  his  best  to  conceal  his 
condition  by  keeping  his  raiders  busy,  and  Sharpe  was  con- 
stantly hearing  of  their  pushing  in  between  the  Pennsylvania 
forts  so  as  to  ravage  his  own  borders.  His  scouts,  forty  miles 
Indian  rav-  bcyoud  Fort  Cumberland,  were  encountering  the  enc- 
ages. 1756.  jjiies'  rangers.  The  savage  rancor  of  these  French 
Indians  had  already  driven  the  pioneers  back  from  the  South 
Mountain,  and  left  the  German  settlements  exposed.  This  was 
the  condition  of  things,  with  no  organized  movement  made  on 
the  English  part,  when  news  of  the  fall  of  Oswego  came  in 
September.  It  was  at  once  feared  it  might  be  the  signal  for  a 
fresh  advance  in  force  from  the  Ohio. 

While  these  alternating  scenes  of  trepidation  and  prepara- 
tion were  following  each  other  east  of  the  AUeghanies,  the 
English  made  two  really  aggressive  movements  beyond  their 
passes,  but  neither  of  them  effected  a  lodgment  in  the  Great 
VaUey. 


KITTANNING  ATTACKED.  377 

In  April,  Andrew  Lewis  led  a  body  of  Virginians  and  Chero- 
kees   against   the   Shawnee  towns,  two  hundred  and  ^ 

,  -J7-.       .     .  .  rn  Lewis's  ex- 

fiftv  miles  beyond  the  Virginia  frontiers,      ihe  party  pedition 

p  ^  nil  •  111     against  the 

was  absent  for  a  month.  Ihey  experienced  bad  suawnees. 
weather,  and  lost  their  provisions  in  crossing  a  stream. 
In  its  main  purpose  Lewis  failed  of  success,  but  he  captured 
some  vagabond  French.  They  were  supposed  to  be  a  party 
of  the  exiled  Acadians,  who  were  trying  to  find  their  way  from 
the  coast  to  Duquesne.  On  the  return  march,  his  Cherokees, 
weary  of  foot,  seized  some  horses  belonging  to  frontiersmen. 
This  was  viewed  as  an  outrage,  and  the  Indians  were  promptly 
punished,  but  at  the  risk  of  their  alliance. 

Late  in  August,  Colonel  John  Armstrong  started  from  Fort 
Shirley  with  a  body  of  Pennsylvanians,  and  crossing  Armstrong 
the  mountains  fell  upon  Kittanning,  the  rallying-point  tSin'^^g.^'^ 
of  the  hostile  Delawares,  situated  on  the  Alleghany.  ^^^' 
Armstrong  devastated  the  settlement,  rescued  a  few  English 
whom  the  Indians  held  as  prisoners,  and  safely  returned.  He 
had  delivered  a  scourging  blow,  but  it  had  small  effect  upon 
the  progress  of  events,  except  that  it  taught  the  enemy  that 
there  were  blows  to  take  as  well  as  to  give.  The  French  ac- 
counts slur  the  matter,  but  the  English  thought  it  quite  equal 
in  boldness  and  celerity  to  the  raids  of  the  French.  It  gave 
occasion  for  Dinwiddle  to  offer  congratulation  to  Governor 
Denny,  very  shortly  after  his  succeeding  to  Morris  in  the  execu- 
tive office  of  Pennsylvania. 

During  the  summer,  the  French  on  the  Ohio  had  been  pre- 
paring for  the  worst.  In  the  spring,  Vaudreuil  con- 
gratulated himself  particularly  in  being  able  to  pro-  provisioned. 
vision  Duquesne  from  New  Orleans  and  the  Illinois. 
Though  this  involved  tugging  at  tow-ropes  and  poling  bateaux 
against  the  current,  it  was  less  laborious  than  attempting  such 
succor  from  the  St.  Lawrence.  Vaudreuil  recognized  the  risks 
from  flanking  parties  of  the  English  at  the  rapids  near  the 
modern  Louisville,  which  necessitated  a  wearisome  portage,  and 
he  considered  that,  to  secure  the  transit,  a  fort  at  that  point 
was  necessary. 

Thus  sure  of  his  supplies,  Dumas,  the  commander  at  the 
forks,  pursued  a  policy  of  harrying  the  English  to  keep  them 


378  TWO  DISMAL    YEARS,  1756,   1757. 

busy.  He  was  conscious  that  his  own  defenses  could  not  stand 
Dumas  anx-  ^^  attack  o£  avtillcry,  if  the  enemy  were  given  time 
ious.   1756.    f^j,  g^^gj^  aj^  assault. 

Fearing  lest  tliis  was  intended,  he  was  alert  to  discover  any 
purpose  of  the  kind,  and  kept  out  his  patrols  in  the  direction 
of  Fort  Cumberland,  whence  the  blow  must  come.  It  was  on 
such  a  scouting  party  that  Celoron,  who  had  buried  the  plates 
on  the  Ohio,  was  killed  during  the  summer. 

Dumas  had  found  that  he  must  satisfy  liimself  with  the 
moral  rather  than  with  the  physical  help  which  had 
his^^dMs.  been  sent  to  Canada  in  the  spring.  The  reinforce- 
ment which  had  reached  Quebec  in  May  had  brought 
Montcalm,  Levis,  Bourlamaque,  and  Bougainville,  but  the 
troops  were  assigned  to  the  more  vital  points  of  Frontenac,  Ti- 
conderoga,  and  Niagara,  —  the  latter  particularly.  As  Vau- 
dreuil  expressed  it,  the  chief  interest  of  the  French  lay  here, 
for  with  Niagara  wrested  from  them,  Duquesne  was  but  a  bur- 
den. Weiser,  the  Pennsylvania  agent,  was  confident  that  at 
one  time  Dumas  had  not  more  than  two  hundred  men  with 
him ;  but  his  flying  squads  were  abundantly  supplying  him 
with  scalps,  as  he  assured  his  superior  at  Quebec. 

The  general  course  of  the  war  during  the  year  had  afforded 
Shirley  re-  little  comfort  to  the  English.  The  ministry,  under 
called.  1756.  qqJqp  ^f  \^\^  being  able  to  give  them  advice,  had  recalled 
Shirley  in  the  spring,  and  the  intimation  which  was  given  of 
a  new  military  leader  caused  Morris  to  think  that  the  interest 
of  the  war  was  likely  to  centre  in  America.  Shirley  had  already 
suspected  that  he  was  to  be  superseded,  but  it  was  not  till 
June,  after  he  had  got  his  plans  well  matured,  had  placed 
General  Winslow  of  Massachusetts  in  command  of  the  chief 
army  of  invasion,  and  had  had  a  struggle  with  the  intrigues  of 
Johnson  and  his  cabal,  that  he  received  his  definite  orders. 
Some  of  the  better  men,  like  Livingston  and  Franklin,  had  not 
lost  confidence  in  Shii-ley,  and  received  the  intelligence  with 
regret,  though  Franklin  thought  that  Shirley  was  little  averse 

to  the  relief.  Webb  and  Abercrombie  had  come  in 
command,      advaucc  of  the  supreme  commander,  but  on  July  23 

Shirley  received  his  immediate  successor  in  New  York. 
This  irritating  and  irritable  nobleman,  the  Earl  of  Loudoun, 


OSWEGO  AND   CARILLON.  379 

lost  no  time  in  advising  the  colonial  governors  of  his  arrival. 
Shirley  outlined  his  plan  for  the  campaign,  and  the  earl 
promptly  countermanded  Shirley's  orders.  There  was  indeed  a 
new  aspect  to  the  war.  The  diplomats  of  England  and  France 
had  dotted  their  polite  caps,  and  in  May  and  June  re-  ^a^  Re- 
spectively the  two  countries  had  declared  war.  Gov-  ^^^'^^'^-  ^"^'^■ 
ernor  Hardy  received  the  word  at  Albany  four  days  after  Lou- 
domi's  arrival.  The  news  reached  Dinwiddie  in  Williamsburs: 
on  August  7,  and  Washington  knew  it  at  Winchester  on  the 
17th. 

Meanwhile,  there  had  been  a  glimmer  of  good  fortune,  owing 
to  Shirley's  prevision.     He  had  recruited  a  body  of  whalemen 
from  New  England,  and  put  them  under  the  command  of  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Bradstreet,  to  man  a  flotilla  of  bateaux 
and  protect  the  communications   with  Oswego.      In  success. 
July,  this  amphibious  little  army    had  valiantly  de- 
feated a  body  of  French  who  were  trying  to  interrupt  those 
communications.    This  success  availed  little,  however,  for  a  few 
weeks  later  the  spirited  Montcalm  had   invested  the  forts  at 
Oswego,  and  was  using  upon  them  the  batteries  which   Brad- 
dock  had  lost  on  the  Monongahela.     By  the  middle 
of  August,  the  post  was  in  French  hands.     The  result  takes  os-^ 
might  have  been  different  if  Loudoun  had  followed 
Shirley's  advice  and  thrown  two  regiments  into  the  forts.     As 
it  was,  the  French  success  virtually  settled  the  year's  campaign. 
It  alarmed  the  English   at  Albany  enough  to  paralyze  their 
other  movements.     It  released  Montcalm  so  that  he  hastened 
to  Carillon  f  Ticonderosra)  and  kept  watch  upon  Wins- 

1  -!-,  Vtt-     1  T^  TTr-   1         1  •  1  •  Montcalm  at 

low  at  Fort  William  Henry.      VV  ith  this  obstruction   cariiion. 
of  the  English  plans  the  season  ended.     The  result  of 
all  was  that  the  French  had  maintained  themselves  on  Lake 
Champlain,  and  had  obtained  a  footing  on  the  southern  shore 
of  Ontario,  strengthening  the  barrier  in  this  direction  against 
the  English  advance  into  the  Great  Valley. 

If  Shirley  had  been  shelved,  his  rival  had  been  given  no  new 
chance  of  martial   distinction.     Johnson  had  indeed    ^ , 

Johuson 

been   put   to    the    service    in    which  he  shone   most,   brings 

'^  .  .  I  Teedyuscung 

There  had  been  for  a  lonff  time  ominous  rumors  that   over  to  the 

.  .  T     English. 

the  Six  Nations  were  treating  with  the  French,  and 


380  TWO  DISMAL    YEARS,   1756,  1757. 

had  gone  over  to  the  enemy.  By  an  adroit  bearing,  Johnson 
was  at  last  in  a  position  to  treat  at  Onondaga  with  the  con- 
currence of  Teedyuscung,  and  on  July  21  the  Iroquois  and  the 
Delawares  were  brought  round  to  the  English  interests  at  a 
conference,  which  was  strengthened  by  later  conciliations  at 
German  Flats  in  August  and  September. 

Meanwhile,  the  Delaware  chieftain  was  negotiating  an  inde- 
TheDeia-  peudeut  Understanding  with  the  Pennsylvanians  at 
the^pemisyi-  Eastou.  They  might  have  made  a  peace,  as  it  looked, 
vamaus.  j£  Loudouu  had  uot  interfered  on  the  ground  that  Sir 
William  alone  was  authorized  to  make  Indian  treaties.  This 
interruption  came  at  a  time  when  it  was  looking  black  on  the 
Pennsylvania  border.  Fort  Granville,  one  of  the  exposed 
stockades,  had  been  taken  (July  30),  and  it  seemed  as  if  the 
frontiers  were  recoiling  everywhere,  and  communica- 
syivania  tious  with  Forts  Lyttlctou  and  Shirley  were  growing 
precarious.  The  war  appeared  to  be  assuming  fresh 
violence,  and  it  must  be  met ;  but  after  a  while  a  lull  came,  and 
the  public  mind  adjusted  itself  to  new  movements  when  the 
assembly,  after  much  persuasion,  had  made  an  appropriation  of 
thirty  thousand  pounds,  "  for  the  king's  use,"  as  their  language 
of  subterfuge  put  it. 

George  Croghan,  whose  trading  interest  had  suffered  by  the 
George  ^VSLT,  was  relieved  from  the  immediate  perils  of  bank- 
Croghan.  puptcy  by  the  Pennsylvania  Assembly  in  their  anxiety 
to  have  so  influential  a  friend  sent  among  the  Indians  along  the 
frontier.  He  had  not  disappointed  expectation,  unless  in  the 
lavish  use  which  he  made  of  the  money  appropriated  for  appeas- 
ing the  Indians.  The  government  of  the  province  did  not  treat 
him  in  just  the  spirit  he  thought  he  deserved,  and  he  resigned 
his  commission.  It  seemed  a  fortunate  thing,  both  for  the 
crown  and  his  province,  when  Johnson  recognized  his  value,  and 
some  months  later,  on  November  24,  made  Croghan  his  deputy 
in  the  management  of  the  savages  in  Pennsylvania  and  on  the 
Ohio. 

The  events  of  the  next  year  (1757)  were  even  more  discour- 
aging for  the  English.  There  had  been  quiet  along  the  borders 
of  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia  during  the  winter ;  but  in  the 
early  spring  rumors  were  rife  of  a  gathering  of  French  at  Fort 


THE  INDIANS.  381 

Machault  (Venango)  for  an  attack  on  Shamokin.    The  French, 
however,  were  too  much    engrossed  with  a  counter-  shamokin. 
solicitude,  for  any  such  desperate  purpose.     Vaudreuil,  ^^^^- 
in  April,  was  issuing  anxious  orders  and  urging  De  Ligneris, 
now  in  command   at  Duquesne,  to  strengthen  that  post.     An 
extreme  scarcity  of  provisions  prevailed  in  Canada.     The  posts 
on  the  Ohio   so   suffered  from  this  cause  that  the  men  were 
scattered  to  pick  up  subsistence.     Later  in  the  spring  and  in 
the  early  simimer,  rumors  of  a  French  advance  thick-  -pe&Ts.  of  a 
ened  along  the  frontiers,  and  the  nimble  scouts  kept  vance!'^'^ 
the  borderers  anxious.     Discordant  stories  about  the  ^^^"^^ 
force  which  De   Ligneris  had  with  him  probably  arose  from 
liis  habit  of  sending  out  his  scalping  parties  in  a  body,  to  be 
broken  up  when  well  within  the  enemy's  borders.     These  par- 
ties coming  and  going  kept  the  force  in  the  fort  inconstant  in 
numbers,  and  this  accounts  for  the  irreconcilable  figures  which 
were  from    time  to    time  reported  to    Sharpe  or  Dinwiddie. 
Occasionally  there  were  stories  of  flotillas  from  the  Mississippi 
bringing   munitions   and   men    to   the    French.     Whenever   a 
French  prisoner  was  taken,  he  was  pretty  sure  to  magnify  such 
recruiting.    These  exaggerations  served  to  dismay  the  English, 
particularly  if    the  prisoner  could  add  that  parties  from  the 
Illinois  had  come  in  to  De  Ligneris,  besides  occasional  squads 
of  Cherokees  and  Creeks. 

Such  was  the  summer's  history,  —  rumor  and  counter-rumor  ; 
and  it  ran  well  on  into  the  autumn.  By  October,  however,  it 
was  feared  that  the  French  successes  at  the  north  had  given 
them  the  opportunity  to  hurry  forward  a  contingent  from  Niag- 
ara, which  rendered  an  advance  from  the  Ohio  more  than  prob- 
able. Upon  such  recurrent  reports  the  garrison  at  Fort  Cum- 
berland was  astir.  The  Indians,  usually  friendly.  The  south- 
had  become  emboldened.  The  Cherokees  and  Cataw-  "^^  Indians. 
bas  were  wandering  about  in  a  sulking  mood,  and  in  some 
places  the  neighboring  Indians  had  proved  so  unruly  that  the 
militia  was  made  ready  for  an  emergency. 

The  same  untoward  condition  of  the  English  projects  at  the 
north  had  fostered  fresh  discontent  among  the    Six  The  north- 
Nations  and  the  dependent  Delawares.     The  fleeting  ^"^  Indians. 
months  make  a  long  record  of  conferences  which  only  post- 
poned the  end.     The  Iroquois  could  not,  or  would  not,  restrain 


382  TWO  DISMAL    YEARS,  1756,   1757. 

their  young  warriors  from  scalping  expeditions.  Johnson  la- 
bored with  the  Shawnee  and  Delaware  embassies  with  little 
effect.  The  Senecas  and  Cayugas  were  unmistakably  hostile, 
and  interposed  to  prevent  the  Delawares  of  the  Ohio  from 
uniting  with  their  Susquehanna  brothers  in  any  peaceful  plan. 
By  midsummer,  Johnson  began  to  have  some  success  in  keeping 
a  part,  at  least,  of  the  tribes  in  a  neutral  disposition.  His 
immediate  neighbors,  the  Mohawks,  with  the  Oneidas  and 
Tuscaroras,  were  more  easily  held. 

His  deputy,  Croghan,  had  at  the  same  time  a  passing  success 
with  Teedyuscung,  who,  "  considering  how  he  loved 
Teedyus-  stroug  liquor,  behaved  very  well."  Croghan  managed 
during  the  summer,  by  wheedling  the  Delawares  and 
cajoling  the  Senecas,  to  bring  that  wary  chieftain  into  one  of 
those  intermittent  spasms  of  peace  which  the  Indians  were 
prompt  to  exhibit  to  those  who  would  pay  for  it.  They  were 
always  pretty  sure  to  leave  their  brothers  on  the  Ohio  untram- 
meled  for  other  negotiations  of  a  like  kind.  Much  the  same 
sort  of  truce  was  purchased  for  a  while  with  the  Cherokees. 

Any  successful  negotiation  with  the  savages  was  at  such  a 
Pitt  in  period  remarkable,  and  testified  to  the  skill  of  Johnson 

power.  ^^^  j^-g  deputies.     Pitt,  of  whom  no  one  had  greater 

expectations  than  himself,  had,  indeed,  in  the  early  summer, 
come  into  power ;  but  hardly  in  time  to  effect  much  change  in 
the  American  plans  before  another  season.  These  were  still 
Loudoun's  doomed  to  mismanagement  through  the  fussy  imbecil- 
pians.  j^y  q£  Loudoun.    Early  in  the  spring,  the  colonial  gov- 

ernors, meeting  him  at  Philadelphia,  had  learned  that  his  mili- 
tary strategy  was  centred  in  a  movement  north,  in  connection 
with  another  toward  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence.  It  was  appar- 
ent that  the  passes  of  the  Alleghanies  were  to  be  left  to  their 
fate,  a  scant  protective  force  looking  out  for  the  border  as  well 
as  it  could. 

The  actual  campaign  opened  in  March  with  a  bit  of  good 
j^i^a„d  luck  for  the  English.    Eigaud,  a  brother  of  Vaudreuil, 

Forfwn-  and  distrusted  by  Montcalm,  was  foiled  in  an  attempt 
liam  Henry.  ^^  surprisc  Fort  William  Henry  by  stealing  upon  it 
over  the  frozen  lake.  Meanwhile,  Loudoun  sailed  away  from 
New  York  to  do  great  things  at  Louisbourg.     While  he  was 

NOTB.    The  opposite  map  is  Emanuel  Bowen's  map  of  the  country  of  tlie  southern  Indians,  17G4. 


384  TWO  DISMAL    YEARS,  1756,  1757. 

gone,  Montcalm,  by  a  clever  bit  of  strategy,  got  between  Fort 
Edward  and  Fort  William  Henry.  There  was  small  skill  and 
less  courage  in  Webb,  who  was  in  Fort  Edward.  He  had  an 
opportunity  to  act  with  spirit,  and  chose  to  be  pusillanimous. 
He  played  into  Montcalm's  hands,  and  advised  the  commanding 
Fort  wu-  officer  at  the  lake  to  surrender.  The  red  flag  came 
fLX^Tu-^  down  on  August  9,  to  be  followed  by  a  revolting  mas- 
gust,  1*57.  gacre,  perpetrated  upon  the  disarmed  garrison  by  the 
savage  auxiliaries,  which  included  a  body  of  Miamis  and  some 
western  Indians  led  by  Charles  de  Langlade. 

The  young  John  Adams,  when  he  heard  of  it  and  of  Lou- 
doun's panicky  return  from  his  bootless  errand,  likened  the 
royal  generals  to  millstones  hung  about  the  colonial  neck.  The 
seaboard,  up  and  down,  got  the  dismal  news  in  August,  and 
everybody  brooded  upon  the  disasters. 


CHAPTEE  XIX. 

THE   OHIO   AND   ST.    LAWRENCE  WON. 

1758-1759. 

The  winter  of  1757-58  in  Canada  was  one  of  ill-advised  con- 
fidence and  sravetv.     For  two  years  the  French  had 

Winter 

held  their  own  and  more.     Success  brought  its  har-  1757-58. 

.  "      .  .  French  and 

pies,  and  peculation   had  rotted   the  commissariats.  English 
The  falsities  of  life  were  sapping  the  future. 

During  the  same  season,  among  the  English,  there  was  need 
of  buoyant  prophecy  to  keep  off  grim  despair.  Two  years  of 
miserable  conduct  of  affairs  had  done  their  work.  Amid  the 
depression,  there  was  a  latent  hope  of  something  better  in  a 
winter  expedition  ;  but  such  woodsmen  as  Croghan  shrunk  from 
the  wild  rigors  of  the  northern  winter,  and  had  little  faith  that 
officers  of  European  habits  could  endure  the  suffering.  Pow- 
nall  wrote  to  Pitt  that  nothing  but  an  overwhelming  force 
thrown  into  Canada  could  turn  the  tide.    That  minis- 

Pitt. 

ter,  already  addressing  himself  to  the  military  prob- 
lem, had  wisely  propitiated  the   provincials  by  removing  dis- 
criminations which  had  favored  the  royal  commission,  and  by 
making  the  provincial  a  sharer  of  the  advantages  of  his  rank. 
If  Pitt  had  been  as  wise  in  selecting  the  leader  to  be  trusted, 
all  would  very  likely  have  been  well ;  but  when  he  Abercrom- 
chose  Abercrombie  to  lead,  and  gave  him  his  appoint-  generaL^" 
ment  at  the  very  end  of  the  woeful  year  of  1757,  he  ^^^^' 
rounded  out  its  record  of  disaster.     The   plans   for  the  new 
year  were  not  much  different  from  what  had  long  been  the  mil- 
itary scheme.     Fort    Duquesne   was   restored    to  the 
prominence  of  a  goal,  as  it  had  been  m  Braddock  s  year,  campaign. 
and  General  John  Forbes  was  selected  for  its  reduc- 
tion.    This  was  the  extreme  western  flank  of  a  comprehensive 
plan,  which  left  to  Amherst  and  WoKe  the  movement  on  the 


386  THE    OHIO  AND  ST.  LAWRENCE   WON. 

eastern  flank  in  an  attack  on  Louisbourg,  while  Abercrombie, 
with  Lord  Howe  as  second,  was  to  advance  upon  Ticonderoga 
and  Crown  Point. 

By  July,  the  campaign  was  at  an  end,  as  far  as  these  latter 

movements  were  concerned.  The  rather  sluggish  te- 
CapeBre-      uacity  of  Amhcrst  had  gained    Cape  Breton,    from 

which  he  returned  to  Boston,  to  start  at  once  for  Al- 
bany to  support  the  central  army,  after  its  great  catastrophe. 
The  weakness,  if  not  poltroonery,  of  Aberci'ombie  had  made 
the  fifteen  thousand  men  who  had  with  flaunting  parade  floated 

down  Lake  George  struggle  back  from  Ticonderoga 
We's  defeat,   two  tliousaud  Icss,  after  having  inflicted  only  a  fifth 

of  that  loss  on  the  French.  Amherst  met  a  dispir- 
ited army,  which  had  lost  its  idol.  Lord  Howe,  in  a  futile  skir- 
mish, and  found  Abercrombie  undone.  It  was  apparent  that 
the  catastrophe  must  be  neutralized  elsewhere. 

In  August,  the  current  changed.  Bradstreet,  who  had  in  the 
Bradstreet  p^Gvious  year  managed  his  whaleboat  men  so  adroitly 
Frontenac.  ^u  the  Ouondaga,  had  unexpectedly  slipped  across  the 
^^^^-  lake  to  Fort  Frontenac.    He  had  with  him  three  thou- 

sand men,  and  when  it  became  known  down  the  St.  Lawrence 
that  the  fort  with  all  its  guns,  provisions,  and  goods  was  lost, 
and  that  the  nine  vessels  in  its  harbor  with  their  armaments 
were  captured,  there  was  reason  for  consternation,  for  it  meant 
to  the  French  that  the  command  of  the  lake  was  gone,  and  no 
supplies  could  be  got  through  to  Niagara  and  Duquesne.  What 
to  do  was  a  difficult  problem,  and  Vaudreuil  and  Montcalm, 

never  in  harmony,  were  more  than  ever  disagreed.  It 
the  fall  of      was  already  feared  that  Duquesne  had  been  taken. 

"  It  is  idle  to  flatter  ourselves  any  longer,"  was  the 
talk.  "  Canada  is  lost,  if  peace  is  not  made  this  winter.  The 
English  have  sixty  thousand  regulars  and  provincials  in  Amer- 
ica. We  have  not  five  thousand.  The  English  colonies  can 
furnish  two  hundred  thousand  men  ;  Canada  at  the  best  can 
supply  only  about  ten  thousand,  and  with  it  all  the  Indians  are 
everywhere  turning  against  us."  There  may  have  been  more 
discouragement  than  truth  in  such  figures,  but  they  were  dis- 
heartening in  any  event. 

We  turn  now  to  consider  the  direct  assault  of  the  English 


FORBES'S   CAMPAIGN.  387 

upon  the  defenses  of  the  Ohio.  The  pacification  of  the  In- 
dians in  this  region  before  Forbes  began  to  move  was  porbes's  ad- 
of  great  importance.  To  do  this  fell  largely  to  the  ^''"'^®"  ^^^^■ 
assiduity  of  Croghan.  He  had  in  the  previous  December  com- 
plained of  the  way  in  which  the  Quakers  were  encouraging  the 
savage  discontent.  ''  They  mvist  be  mad,"  he  said. 
Their  conduct  was  having  its  effect  through  the  win-  and  the  in- 
ter,  and  the  French  at  Duquesne  were  not  without  know- 
ledge of  it.  In  January,  Sharpe  had  heard  that  De  Ligneris 
had  from  two  to  three  hundred  men  in  the  fort,  who  were  by 
relays  working  on  a  stronger  post  over  the  river,  "  a  small  dis- 
tance above."  While  this  was  going  on,  he  kept  out  about  six 
hundred  Indians,  and  it  was  mainly  through  them  and  their 
scouting  that  the  French  commander  was  able  to  report  to  Vau- 
dreuil  how  the  Pennsylvania  borderers  were  clustering  about 
their  forts  for  protection. 

The  southern    Indians   were  restless  also,  and  Fort  Chissel 
was  built  to  overawe  them.     This  was  at  a  point  over  jjj^  g^^^jj. 
the  divide  from  the  valley  of  Virginia  and  near  the  ^'^  ludians. 
New  River,  where  the  trails  from  Philadelpliia  and  Richmond 
met  and  advanced  two  hundred  miles  farther  to  Cum- 

11        -,   r^  Fort  Chissel. 

berland  (jrap. 

Dviring  March,  it  seemed  as  if  Teedyuscung  was  to  fall  into 
one  of  his  intermittent  moods  of  quiet.  The  farmers  of  Penn- 
sylvania were  not  so  easily  satisfied  as  the  savage.  They  had 
not  been  paid  for  their  assistance  in  helping  Braddock  move 
his  army,  and  Sharpe  bluntly  told  Forbes,  now  in  Philadelphia, 
that  he  must  supply  ready  cash  if  anything  was  to  be  done. 

Forbes,  a  man  of  imperturbable  energy,  passed  the  spring  in 
Philadelphia,  giving  what  strength  he  had  —  for  he  was 
a  sick  man  —  to  the  task  of  organizing  his  army.     He   Phiiadei- 
had  some  good  lieutenants  in  Bouquet  and  others,  but  officers. 

.  .    .  .  .  1758 

Washington,  who  joined  him,  did  not  wholly  possess 
his  confidence,  and  he  found  that  Grant,  who  commanded  some 
Highland  Scots,  was  not  to  be  trusted.  His  commissary,  Sir 
John  Sinclair,  was  not  a  fortunate  choice.  One  hardly  knows 
whether  he  was  imbecile  or  simply  vexatious.  The  service  of 
his  department  in  supplying  stores  and  securing  transportation 
was  doubtless  a  trying  one.  The  country  people  were  provok- 
ing, and  the  friendly  Indians  tedious  in  negotiation.     Forbes 


388  THE   OHIO  AND  ST.  LAWRENCE    WON. 

himself,  generally  temperate  in  his  utterance,  was  prompted  at 
times  to  berate  the  dilatory  and  self-seeking  Pennsylvania  boor. 

The  force  which  was  gathering  for  Forbes  was  heterogeneous 
His  force.  cuough.  Bcsidc  the  Highlanders,  there  was  a  body 
of  royal  Americans  —  mainly  German-Americans  — 
and  whatever  jjrovincial  rangers  and  militiamen  could  be  got 
together  by  robbing  the  garrisons  of  the  frontiers  from  the 
Susquehanna  to  the  Altamaha. 

It  was  the  last  of  June  when  Forbes  himself  left  Philadelphia, 
Forbes's  ^^^  ^^  ^^^  wcakncss  he  had  to  be  borne  in  a  litter. 
route.  'j'jjg  question  of  the  ultimate  route  over  the  mountains 

was  one  in  which  Forbes  and  Bouquet  differed  from  Washing- 
ton. The  Virginian  argued  ardently  for  the  Braddock  route, 
because  it  was  already  opened,  and  its  difficulties  were  under- 
stood and  could  be  met.  The  alternative  passage,  which  would 
lead  the  army  by  Carlisle,  Bedford,  and  so  on  to  the  Pennsyl- 
vania passes,  was  shorter,  and  woidd  have  to  be  made  ready. 
Bouquet  talked  over  the  advantages  of  each  with  Washington, 
but  neither  could  convince  the  other.  Bouquet  thought  the 
Virginia  colonel  "  had  no  idea  of  the  difference  between  a  party 
and  an  army."  There  were  very  likely  some  counter-views 
based  upon  the  future  trade  of  the  rival  provinces.  Virginia 
did  not  care  to  have  a  better  road  for  trading  purposes  opened 
north  of  the  Potomac  to  increase  the  facilities  of  Pennsylvania. 
Pennsylvania  was  not  content  to  be  dependent  on  one  south  of 
it,  constructed  for  the  behoof  of  Virginia.  Whatever  the  inner 
secrets.  Bouquet  prevailed,  and  Forbes  was  to  advance  over  the 
Pennsylvania  passes.  In  July,  Major  Armstrong,  with  his 
pioneers,  was  hewing  trees  and  leveling  obstructions.  Grant 
with  his  Highlanders  and  Lewis  with  a  body  of  provincials  fol- 
lowed for  support. 

In  August,  General  Forbes  had  not  gone  on  farther  than  Car- 
Forbes  at  Hsle,  and  here  he  learned  by  letter  from  Abercrombie 
carusie.  himself  of  his  rueful  failure.  The  fallen  soldier  was 
as  confused  in  his  recital  as  he  could  well  be,  though  he  coidd 
not  disguise  what  seemed  to  have  been  an  irretrievable  disas- 
ter. There  was  more  comfort  in  the  story  of  Amherst's  success 
at  Louisbourg,  which  came  about  the  same  time,  and  Forbes 
caused  the  camp  to  make  merry  over  it. 

The  general's  health,  meanwhile,  was  the  subject  of  grave 


GRANT'S  DEFEAT.  389 

apprehension.  Some  days  lie  gained  apparently ;  on  others  he 
grew  worse ;  but  he  was  patient.  Though  this  ad-  j-orbes's 
vance  of  his  army  seemed  slow,  he  was  satisfied  with  ''«*i*'>- 
it,  for  postponed  action  was,  as  he  felt,  the  best  disorganizer 
of  the  Indian  allies  of  the  French.  Impatience  always  loosens 
the  Indian  bonds.  Forbes  was  accordingly  anxious  to  give,  by 
delay,  more  time  for  this  influence  to  work. 

It  was  a  sad  mischance  for  the  French  that  some  one  of  their 
emissaries  at  Detroit  had  spread  the  report  that  the 

1  .,.,,.  ,  The  French 

Iroquois  were  doomed  to  be  annihilated,  in  order  to  aud  the 
remove  the  great  bulwark  of  the  English.  The  boast 
reached  the  Delawares,  and  had  already  been  repeated  to  the 
Senecas.  It  was  just  one  of  those  blunders  that  Johnson  was 
on  the  watch  for,  and  he  used  the  story  to  great  advantage. 
Not  uninfluenced  by  it,  Teedyuscung  was  also  quieted  on  the 
Susquehanna. 

With  this  influence  at  work,  affecting  the  French  interests, 
there  was  a  chance  for  a  skillful  and  courageous  Eng- 

^   .  .      °      C.  F.  Post 

lish  asrent  to  do  ffood  deeds  among  the  Ohio  tribes,   ontheohio. 

1758 

Governor  Denny  found  the  best  man  for  the  task  in 
Christian  Frederick  Post,  an  honest  and  fearless  Moravian,  who 
had  for  years  familiarized  himself  with  the  savages,  and  married 
two  wives  among  them.  He  kept  a  journal  on  his  expedition, 
and  we  can  follow  him  step  by  step,  only  to  be  captivated  by  the 
guileless  simplicity  and  straightforward  confidence  of  the  man. 

He  left  Philadelphia  on  July  15,  and  on  September  9  he  had 
turned  homeward.  In  less  than  two  months  he  had  accom- 
plished his  purpose  of  making  the  Ohio  Indians  ready  to  give 
a  welcome  to  the  army  led  by  Forbes.  The  warriors  protected 
Post  even  in  going  boldly  into  the  French  camps  at  Venango 
and  the  forks. 

It  was  some  days  after  Post  had  started  homeward,  when 
Grant  marched  his  Highlanders  rapidly  ahead  of  his  (j^ant's  de- 
support  into  the  vicinity  of  Duquesne.  He  was  seem-  *®**-  ^'^• 
ingly  actuated  by  the  hope  of  making  a  sudden  capture  of  the 
fort.  "  His  thirst  for  fame,"  said  his  general  later,  "  brought 
on  his  own  perdition."  The  French  sallied  from  their  defenses 
(September  15),  and  of  his  eight  hundred  jDlaidsmen,  Grant 
left  three  hundred  on  the  field.     His  defeated  force  then  re- 


390  THE   OHIO  AND  ST.   LAWRENCE    WON. 

treated  upon  the  supports.  It  was  a  stupid  act,  and  when,  two 
months  later,  the  news  of  it  reached  Montcalm,  he  thought  Du- 
quesne  had  been  saved  for  a  time,  even  though  the  difficulties 
of  succoring  it  might  compel  its  abandonment  in  the  spring. 

This  heady  venture  of  Grant  had  its  bad  effect  on  the  Indi- 
indian  con-  ^^^'  ^^^  *^®  Pcnnsjlvanians  entered  upon  a  new  con- 
Eastoif  ^oc-  ference  at  Easton  in  October  with  a  certain  disadvan- 
tober,  1758.  tagc.  They  went  farther,  however,  than  some  of  the 
over-mountain  land  companies  were  inclined  to  allow.  They 
pledged  faith  to  the  Indians  that  the  trans-AUeghany  spaces 
should  be  sacred  to  the  savage  for  his  hunting-ground,  and  no 
La^^^  one  should  occupy  them  except  with  the  tribes'  permis- 

compames.  gjon.  There  were  at  this  time  at  least  three  million 
acres  of  these  very  lands  alienated  to  different  companies. 
Only  recently  the  Greenbrier  Company  had  patented  a  hundred 
thousand  acres  on  the  river  of  that  name.  There  were  of  course 
rival  claims  in  behalf  of  more  than  one  colony  for  these  western 
wilds ;  but  it  was  the  misfortune  of  the  Indian  never  quite  to 
comprehend  the  white  man's  rivalries. 

Post  was  again  sent  out  with  a  new  wampum  belt  which  ex- 
pressed this  immunity  for  the  Indian  lands.     He  now 

Post's 

second  added  to  his  earlier  success  in  winning  the  hesitating 

mission.  o  a 

tribes. 

After  this,  Forbes  had  little  to  fear  from  the  Indians,  and 
Forbes  at  whcu  he  reached  Loyalhannon  in  October,  where  Bou- 
nor^^'octo-  <1^6t  ^^^  formed  a  camp,  he  sent  forward  a  messenger 
ber,  1758.  ^^  warn  the  Indians  to  keep  west  of  the  Alleghany, 
lest  they  should  be  involved  in  the  battle  which  was  to  come. 

While  the  camp  was  at  Loyalhannon,  the  enemy's  scouts  hung 
about,  and  at  one  time  ventured  upon  an  attack,  but  without 
success.  The  weather,  however,  was  bad,  making  the  roads 
heavy,  and  the  advance  was  delayed.  The  poor  general,  up  and 
down  with  his  malady,  was  now  within  fifty  miles  of  his  goal. 
He  waited  till  the  18tli  of  November,  and  then,  taking  twenty- 
five  hundred  picked  troops  in  light  marching  order,  he  pushed 
rapidly  ahead,  himself  still  borne  by  his  men.  His  van  was 
startled  on  the  24th  by  a  heavy,  rumbling  sound,  long-drawn 
out.  Presently,  his  pioneers  came  upon  the  stark  bodies  of  the 
slain  Highlanders  of  Grant,  and  a  ghastly  row  of  heads  was 
stuck  on  poles  along  the  way.     The  sight  inflamed  the  passions 


FORT  DUQUESNE. 


391 


FORT  DUQUESNE. 
[From  the  Pennsylvania  Archives,  1790,  App.  p.  430.] 

of  the  men,  but  when  the  fort  was  reached  there  was  no  one 
upon  whom  to  wreak  vengeance.  The  dull  boom  had  accom- 
panied the  blowing^  up  of  the  fort,  and  its  garrison 

^  .  ,  .  Duquesne 

was  in  flight.     The  English  had  marched  an  average  destroyed. 
of  ten  miles  a  day,  and  it  was  November  25  when 
they  entered   the  ruined  fort.     On  the  26th,  Forbes  wrote  to 
Governor  Denny,  announcing  that  he  had  invited  the  headmen 
of  the  Indians  to  a  conference,  and  he  hoped  "  in  a  few  words 


392  THE   OHIO  AND  ST.  LAWRENCE    WON. 

and  in  a  few  days  to  make  everything  easy.  I  shall  then  set  out 
[he  adds]  to  kiss  your  hands,  if  I  have  strength  left  to  carry 
Pittsbur  h  ^^  through  the  journey."  This  uuquailing  hero  hut- 
named.          ^g^j  jjjg  jjjgjj  about  the  grouud,  called  the  spot  Pitts- 


Ciunl)  erlfi 


FORT   MASSAC   AND  VICINITY. 
[From  the  general  map  of  the  Ohio  in  Callot's  Atlas,  1826.] 

burgh,  after  the  great  minister,  and  placing  Lieutenant-Colonel 
Mercer  in  command,  left  for  Pliiladelphia. 

The  fugitive  French  went  off  in  detachments.     De  Ligneris 

led  the  best  fighting  material  to    Fort  Machault  at 

tivesfrom      Vcuaugo,  and  soon  after  began  to  send  out  his  emis- 

uquesne.      ^^^\^^  ^^  ^^^  \)2^  the  Indians.     Aubry  conducted  the 


THE  LOWER  OHIO. 
[Showing  Fort  Massac  and  the  mouths  of  the  Tennessee  and  Cumberland  rivers.    From  Callot'i 
Atlas,  PI.  xi.] 


394  THE   OHIO  AND  ST.  LAWRENCE   WON. 

rest  in  boats  down  the  Ohio.  Thirty  or  more  miles  before  the 
Mississippi  was  reached,  this  officer  stopped  to  rehabilitate  an 
old  stockade  known  as  Fort  Massac.  Placing  a  garrison  in  it, 
he  went  on,  bearing  most  of  his  cannon,  and  finally  found  rest 
at  Fort  Chartres. 

Forbes  reached  Philadelphia,  but  did  not  long  survive.  In 
March,  1759,  he  died,  with  the  satisfaction  that  he  had 
done  in  his  feebleness  a  heroic  action,  and  had  restored 
the  red  flag  to  the  Great  Valley.  "  The  capture  of  Louisbourg 
is  the  more  striking,"  said  Bouquet,  "  but  the  capture  of  Du- 
quesne  is  the  more  important."  The  English  hold  on  the  Ohio 
had  been  secured ;  it  was  yet  to  be  gained  on  the  St.  Lawrence. 

There  was  little  doubt  from  the  beginning  that  the  cam- 
Campaign  paign  of  1759  would  paralyze  the  military  power  of  the 
of  1759.  French  and  render  easy  its  ultimate  destruction.  The 
only  hope  of  Montcalm  was  that  a  defeat  in  Canada  would  not 
carry  the  surrender  of  Louisiana.  He  hoped  it  might  leave 
debatable  the  country  of  the  Illinois,  which  had  been  alternately 
considered  a  part  of  Canada  and  of  Louisiana.  There  was  at 
one  time  a  chance  that  Louisiana  could  be  saved  by  landing  a 
French  force  in  Carolina  to  divert  the  English  attention  from  a 
northern  campaign.  It  was  a  belief  that  if  this  incursion  failed 
to  maintain  itself,  it  could  fight  long  enough  to  work  its  way  to 
the  Mississippi,  and  so  unite  with  any  remnant  that  might  be 
left  of  the  Canadian  defenders.  But  the  plan  was  too  hazard- 
ous, and  the  record  of  the  project  is  of  interest  only  as  a  symp- 
tom of  desperation. 

At  the  end  of  the  last  campaign,  Vaudreuil  had  warned  the 
home  government  of  the  inevitable  catastrophe  if 
be^r^let  Francc  did  not  succor  her  colony.  With  a  popula- 
*^^^'  tion  of  82,000,  and  only  20,000   able  to  bear  arms, 

—  militia,  woodsmen,  and  Indians,  —  Canada  could  not  exj^ect 
to  maintain  the  unequal  contest.  Langlade  might  indeed  bring 
a  hundred  or  two  of  the  western  Indians  to  the  rescue, 
The  Indians.   ^^^  ^^^^  ^^^  ^^^^  ^^  ^-^^  ^^^j^^  defection  of  the  Mia- 

mis  ?  Except  the  Delawares,  there  seemed  hardly  a  prominent 
tribe  left  to  be  involved  in  this  final  struggle,  which  had  not 
been  swung  over  to  the  English  side. 


AMHERST'S   CAMPAIGN.  395 

lu  their  intestine  affairs  the  Canadians  were  no  more  for- 
tunate. The  governor  and  Montcalm  had  never  intestine 
agreed,  and  now  that  they  were  on  the  brink  of  ruin,  Canada*?^ 
their  disputes  grew  hotter,  Bougainville  had  been  ^'^^■ 
sent  over  to  France  to  represent  the  gravity  of  the  situation, 
and  in  the  spring  of  1759  he  had  returned  without  a  word  of 
encouragement.  There  were  no  soldiers  to  be  spared  for  the 
colony.  If  there  were  and  they  were  sent  over,  they  would  be 
intercepted  by  the  English  fleet.  If  this  should  not  happen, 
they  could  not  be  provisioned.  Such  were  the  disheartening 
alternatives.  The  only  ray  of  better  fortune  was  that  the  gov- 
ernment had  recognized  the  necessity  of  placing  Montcalm  in 
an  independent  position  as  the  military  leader,  and  when  Bou- 
gainville delivered  to  that  gallant  soldier  this  new  commission, 
it  was  the  only  hope  with  which  he  was  charged.  "  Our  gen- 
eral would  like  to  multiply  us  and  send  us  everywhere,"  was  the 
feeling  ;  but  with  Quebec,  Niagara,  and  the  Ohio  to  defend,  and 
with  forces  insufficient  for  the  defense  of  any  one  of  them,  the 
struggle  could  not  last  long.  "  Canada  will  be  taken,"  wrote 
Montcalm  on  April  12,  "  this  campaign,  or  assuredly  during  the 
next,  if  there  be  not  some  unforeseen  good  luck,  or  a  power- 
ful diversion  by  sea  against  the  English  colonies,  or  some  gross 
blunders  on  the  part  of  the  enemy."  In  the  same  letter  he 
charges  the  French  commissaries  on  the  Ohio  as  disturbing  by 
their  peculations  the  relations  with  the  Indians.  "  If  the  Indi- 
ans had  a  fourth  part  of  what  is  supposed  to  be  expended  for 
them,  the  king  would  have  all  of  them  on  his  side,  the  English 
none." 

With  the  English  there  was  as  much  confidence  as  there  was 
disheartenment  on  the  side  of  the  French.  In  Europe,  j^^  English 
England's  ally,  Frederick  of  Prussia,  had  indeed  passed  <'<"»fi*^'^°t- 
the  bounds  of  success,  and  was  desponding  at  the  turn  of  affairs ; 
but  Pitt  felt  that  the  war  was  to  be  won  in  America.  On 
December  29,  1758,  he  had  outlined  the  campaign  to  Amherst, 
who  was  to  do  the  work,  or  at  least  to  be  held  i-espon- 
sible  for  it.     lie  himself  was  to  take  charofe  of  the  ciiarge. 

1759. 

direct  northern  attack  by  Lake  Champlain.     By  the 
end  of  June,  he  was  at  Lake  George  with  eleven  thousand  men, 
half  regidars.     After  beginning  a  fort,  he  started  with  a  flotilla 
down  the  lake  on  July  21.     Bourlamaque   retired  before  him 


396  THE   OHIO  AND  ST.  LAWRENCE    WON. 

from  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point.  The  modern  tourist  sees 
to-day  at  Crown  Point  the  heavy  ruins  of  the  fort  and  barracks 
which  Amherst  tarried  to  build.  He  was  timing  his  progress  to 
join  before  Quebec  an  auxiliary  force  ascending  the  St.  Law- 
rence. Of  this  army  he  had  been  anxiously  awaiting  intelli- 
gence, but  the  scouts  whom  he  had  sent  north  were  foiled,  and  had 
escaped  capture  by  flying  down  the  Connecticut  valley.  There 
was  another  but  very  circuitous  way  to  learn  how  Wolfe,  in 
charge  of  this  other  force,  had  succeeded,  and  to  convey  to  him 
the  story  of  Amherst's  own  progress.  This  was  by  dispatching 
a  messenger  to  Boston,  who  should  then  reach  Quebec  by  the 
Kennebec  and  Chaudiere  valleys,  —  the  route  by  which  Arnold 
conducted  his  unfortunate  expedition  sixteen  years  later.  From 
Crown  Point  Amherst  sent  such  a  messenger  to  say  that  he  was 
preparing  the  flotilla  in  which  he  expected  to  advance  against 
the  French  vessels,  which  were  at  Isle  aux  Noix.  There  was  a 
long  delay  in  getting  this  armament  ready,  and  when  everything 
was  prepared  in  October,  Amherst  feared  the  autumnal  storms 
and  never  started.  The  French,  however,  blew  up  their  vessels, 
rendering  easier  the  next  year's  advance  by  that  way. 

If  the  campaign  had  accomplished  nothing  more  than  the 
commander-in-chief  had  carried  out,  Pitt  might  well  have  won- 
dered if  hopes  and  outlay  had  been  repaid.  Fortunately,  the 
campaign  had  been  decided  at  Quebec  and  Niagara,  on  the  two 
flanks. 

The  lesser  of  these  two  auxiliary  movements  reacted  on  the 
greater,  and  we  need  to  follow  them  both  connectedly. 

Wolfe's 

campaign.  In  May,  Wolfc  was  at  Halifax  making  his  preparations. 
He  next  transferred  his  force  to  Louisbourg,  having 
three  brigadiers  under  him,  —  Monckton,  Townshend,  and  Mur- 
ray. During  June,  the  fleet  of  Admiral  Saunders  conveyed 
Wolfe's  transports  up  the  St.  Lawrence. 

Montcalm,  with  his  army  in  Quebec  and  along  the  river  be- 
low the  town,  was  preparing  for  the  attack,  with  about  fourteen 
thousand  men  of  all  sorts  and  over  a  hundred  guns.  He  had 
some  armed  boats  and  had  improvised  fire-ships,  which  in  the 
end  failed  of  their  purpose  in  several  trials  against  the  English 
vessels.  Vaudreuil,  still  obstinate,  knew  that  Wolfe  had  landed 
nine  thousand  men  on  the  island  of  Orleans,  and  he  thwarted 


NIAGARA    ATTACKED.  397 

Montcalm's  purpose  to  fortify  Point  Ldvis,  opposite  the  city,  on 
the  south  side  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  This  mischance  Wolfe  took 
advantage  of,  and  seized  that  commanding  ground,  so  necessary 
to  his  fleet.  The  movement  was  in  some  respects  a  hazardous 
one,  for  it  divided  his  army,  and  placed  a  deep  river  between 
the  two  parts ;  but  he  knew  that  his  own  fleet  controlled  that 
river.  This  naval  supremacy  again  induced  him  to  make  a 
third  division,  and  place  a  force  on  the  northern  shore  of  the 
river,  below  the  Falls  of  Montmorency. 

While  the  situation  on  the  St.  Lawrence  was  thus  in  a 
considerable  degree  one  of  peril,  events  happening  at  Niagara 
had  decided  the  fate  of  the  Ohio  country.  We  must  glance 
at  them  before  showing  their  effects  both  on  Wolfe  and  Mont- 
calm. 

It  was  the  English  plan  to  save  the  Ohio  at  Niagara.  Mili- 
tary critics  have  sometimes  urged  that  the  force  sent 

•  TVT-  1111  *v        •  T^«  attack 

against  Niagara  could  have  been  more  enective  as  a  on  Niagara. 
part  of  Amherst's  army,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  that  gen- 
eral could  have  gained  celerity  by  an  increase  of  force.  If  he 
was  capable  of  such  acceleration,  it  is  possible  the  capture  of 
Montreal  might  have  taken  place  a  year  earlier,  and  the  battle 
of  Ste.  Foy  been  avoided.  It  would  have  risked,  however,  the 
hold  that  Forbes  had  secured  on  the  Ohio,  and  perhaps  have 
aided  that  escape  to  Louisiana  which  was  the  ultimate  hope  of 
the  Canadians. 

In  March,  1759,  Bouquet  had  succeeded  in  temporary  com- 
mand of   the   department,  which  included  the  Ohio, 

,  ,  Bouquet's 

pending  the  arrival  of  Stanwix,  who  had  been  ordered  command, 
to  Philadelphia.  There  were  about  a  thousand  men 
at  the  forks,  and  it  was  quite  possible  that  the  French,  if  bound 
to  recover  it,  could  bring  a  much  larger  force  against  it.  What 
policy  to  pursue,  if  attacked.  Bouquet  and  Amherst  were  not 
agreed  upon.  Bouquet  was  for  retreating  before  an  attack  in 
force ;  Amherst  for  acting  defensively  till  the  post  could  be 
relieved  from  Fort  Ligonier  and  the  other  Pennsylvania  stock- 
ades. In  April,  all  was  quiet  along  the  Alleghany,  but  before 
the  month  closed,  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania  thought  it  pru- 
dent to  send  the  Moravian,  Post,  to  the  Senecas  to  see  if  any 
mischief  was  hatching. 

That  the  French  had  intended  to  regain  the  forks  seems  cer- 


398  THE   OHIO  AND  ST.   LAWRENCE    WON. 

tain,  as  Croghan  believed,  but  the  English  advance  toward  Ni- 
The  French  agara  had  disconcerted  their  plans,  and  by  early  July 
Aiteglwnyl^^  it  had  been  necessary,  under  orders,  for  the  French 
■'^^^-  to  abandon  the  Alleghany  in  the  hope  of  aiding  in 

the  defense  of  Niagara.  The  river  was  too  low  to  transport 
the  heavy  stores,  and  they  were  sacrificed.  Svich  portions  as 
were  not  acceptable  to  the  Indians  were  piled  in  the  fort  at 
Venango,  and  the  whole  was  fired.  The  boats  that  had  been 
prepared  for  a  descent  upon  Fort  Pitt  were  destroyed,  and  their 
swivels  were  buried.  The  fugitive  garrison  made  its  way  by 
Le  Boeuf,  where  a  similar  destruction  took  place,  to  Presqu' 
Isle,  and  there  a  new  surprise  awaited  them. 

Prideaux,  one  of  Amherst's  brigadiers,  keeping  his  communi- 
cations open  through  Oswego, — which  La  Corne  vainly 
attacked.  tried  to  dcstroy,  —  had  advanced  upon  Niagara  in 
force,  while  Pouchot,  the  commander  of  that  fort,  was 
awaiting  reinforcements  from  the  western  posts.  Prideaux  be- 
ing killed  early  in  the  attack,  the  command  fell  to  his  second 
in  authority.  Sir  William  Johnson,  who  completed  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  besieging  lines.  Hearing  now  of  the  approach 
of  Aubry  and  De  Ligneris  with  the  western  party,  Johnson 
promptly  passed  up  the  river  to  confront  them.  It  happened 
that  the  same  day  saw  the  fort  surrendered,  and  its  succoring 
force  hurled  back  by  Johnson.  The  fugitives  fled  to  Presqu' 
Isle,  where  they  were  joined  by  those  who  had  abandoned 
Venango.     The  united  bodies  continued  their  flight  to  Detroit. 

Niagara,  the  long-coveted  entrance  to  the  Ohio  valley,  was 
Wolfe  and  ^^w  iu  the  hands  of  the  victor,  and  Fort  Pitt  was  safe. 
at^Quebec.  Such  wcrc  the  tidiugs  which  in  these  midsummer  days 
^'^^^-  reached  the  rival  generals  on  the  St.  Lawrence,  and 

were  a  cheer  to  one  and  disheartenment  to  the  other.  The 
effect  on  Wolfe  was  to  spur  him  on  to  greater  risks.  He  sent  a 
frigate  to  run  by  the  batteries  of  Cape  Diamond,  while  his  men 
dragged  boats  overland  from  Point  Levis,  and  embarked  above 
under  the  protection  of  the  frigate.  This  was  a  fourth  partition 
of  his  army,  and  the  risks  were  quite  commensurate  with  the 
stakes.  The  desperation  of  Montcalm,  to  whom  the  tidings  of 
Niagara  had  also  come,  was  equaled  only  by  that  of  Wolfe. 
Both  commanders  were  playing  their  game  at  fearful  odds  ;  and 


WOLFE  AT   QUEBEC.  399 

but  for  his  isolation,  the  French  general  might  very  well  expect 
a  victory  as  Frontenac  did,  when  the  fleet  of  Phips  dotted  the 
broad  basin  before  him.  The  season  was  rapidly  slijjping  away. 
Montcalm  was  perhaps  losing  the  most  by  the  delay,  but  nei- 
ther the  spirit  of  the  English  general  nor  the  constancy  of  his 
troops  could  endure  much  longer  without  a  trial  of  arms.  He 
hoped  to  force  an  engagement  near  the  Montmorency,  but  his 
effort  failed.  He  withdrew  his  men  at  this  point,  and  it  was 
done  with  great  good  luck.  Almost  aimlessly,  or  at  least  without 
knowing  precisely  how  to  emjjloy  them,  Wolfe  pushed  larger 
bodies  of  men  up  the  river,  and  Admiral  Holmes,  with  a  part 
of  the  fleet,  went  up  to  support  them.  Bougainville  was  pa- 
trolling the  river  bank  above  the  town,  watching  the  enemy, 
and  covering  supply-trains  that  descended  to  Montcalm  and 
the  town.  He  had  about  fifteen  hundred  men  with  him.  Ad- 
miral Holmes  had  a  grim  satisfaction  in  seeing  these  devoted 
Frenchmen  grow  footsore  and  weary,  as  he  let  his  ships  float 
carelessly  up  and  down  with  the  tide,  while  Bougainville  fol- 
lowed abreast  to  prevent  a  landing.  All  the  while,  Montcalm 
had  Levis  out,  with  another  flying  body  of  troops,  to  watch  for 
Amherst,  who  was  expected  to  be  plodding  down  from  Three 
Rivers  instead  of  building  barracks  at  Crown  Point.  By  Au- 
gust, the  French  general,  learning  the  truth  about  Amherst,  was 
relieved  of  maintaining  this  wearisome  watch.  It  was  not  far 
from  the  first  of  September  when  Wolfe  also  learned  of  Am- 
herst's position  by  the  arrival  of  the  messenger  from  the  Ken- 
nebec. The  news  was  not  encouraging,  and  it  was  apparent 
that  if  Quebec  was  to  be  taken,  Amherst  could  have  no  hand 
in  it.  The  weary  weeks  that  had  passed  bid  fair  to  be  followed 
by  as  many  more,  closing  with  the  failure  of  accomplishing 
anything  before  preparation  must  be  made  to  escape  an  ice- 
bound river.     But  suddenly  a  crisis  was  precipitated. 

Wolfe,  doubtfid  how  to  turn,  was  one  day  scanning  through 
a  glass  from  Point  Levis  the  opposite  precipice.  There  was  a 
fair  field  for  an  encounter  above  ;  but  the  sheer  and  rugged 
steep  above  the  water  seemed  to  offer  no  chance  whereby  to 
gain  the  top.  His  scrutiny  at  last  revealed  what  looked  like  a 
ravine,  cutting  into  the  precipice,  and  worn  by  the  rains.  He 
conjectured  that  it  probably  gave  chances  for  a  foothold.  The 
French  seemingly  recognized  the  chance  it  offered  to  the  enemy, 


400  THE   OHIO  AND  ST.  LAWRENCE   WON. 

but  deemed  it  small,  for,  as  Wolfe  counted  the  tents  of  the 
guard  at  the  head  of  the  ravine,  he  saw  that  the  force  was  scant. 
One  Stobo,  a  provincial,  who  had  been  a  captive  in  Quebec 
and  had  escaped,  confirmed  Wolfe's  supposition  as  to  the  prac- 
ticability of  the  ascent,  if  the  men  had  bold  leaders. 

Two  things  favored  a  movement  by  this  ravine.  Bougain- 
ville, who  was  likely  to  confront  the  attempt  if  openly  made, 
was  easily  carried  up  the  river,  out  of  support  of  its  French  de- 
fenders, by  the  oft-tried  manoeuvre  of  Holmes,  whose  ship  under 
a  favoring  wind  could  be  borne  bej'ond  the  strength  of  the  rising 
tide.  The  other  advantage  was  fortunately  revealed  to  Wolfe, 
when  he  learned  that  Bougainville  was  intending  to  send  down 
a  flotilla  of  supply-boats  to  the  beleaguered  town  the  first  dark 
night,  trusting  to  the  deep  shadows  of  the  bank  concealing  them 
from  the  watchful  English.  The  French  guards  and  batteries 
along  the  shore  were  informed  of  the  project,  and  would  have 
their  suspicions  quelled  at  any  similar  procession  of  boats. 
Wolfe  therefore  determined  to  anticipate  the  French  project. 
Arranging  that  Saunders  with  his  ships  below  the  town  should 
divert  attention  by  feigning  an  attack  on  Beauport,  a  suburb 
below  the  St.  Charles,  Wolfe  was  ready  when  the  darkness 
deepened  to  shove  his  boats,  with  their  thirty-six  hundred  men, 
directly  under  the  bank.  The  long  file  of  boats  moved  silently 
down,  and  every  hail  from  the  shore  was  treacherously  answered, 
so  that  not  a  suspicion  was  aroused.  The  ravine  was  reached 
and  his  van  was  at  the  summit  before  the  alarm  was 
puins^f  sounded.  A  foothold  secured,  details  were  sent  up 
Abraham.  ^^^^  ^  .^^^  ^^  capturc  the  guus  that  might  annoy  the 
rear  portion  of  his  flotilla,  and  this  prompt  action  secured  for 
Wolfe  a  position  on  the  field  with  all  the  troops  which  he  had 
intended  to  handle. 

Montcalm's  headquarters  were  across  the  St.  Charles,  this 
minor  stream  forming  with  the  St.  Lawrence  the  promontory  of 
Quebec,  and  when  the  day  dawned,  the  red  line  of  the  British, 
stretched  across  the  plain,  was  conspicuous  beyond  the  valley 
to  the  startled  gaze  of  the  French.  Montcalm  saw  that  a  crisis 
had  come.  To  allow  Quebec  to  be  taken  by  assault  on  its  land 
side  would  insure  the  turning  of  its  captured  guns  upon  his  own 
camp.  It  has  been  held  that  Montcalm's  safer  course  would 
have  been  to  throw  reinforcements  into  the  town,  and  while  it 


MURRAY  AT  QUEBEC.  401 

stood  the  attack,  to  worry  the  English  flanks.  Such  a  plan  did 
not  well  suit  the  celerity  and  pluck  of  such  a  soldier  as  Mont- 
calm, and  he  adopted  the  bolder  alternative  of  fighting,  line 
against  line,  before  the  gates  of  the  town. 

Both  sides  thus  cast  the  die,  and  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ino-  the  hostile  lines  were  advancing:  face  to  face.   The 

,      ,  ...  -,  1         -r<  1  Tl'e  battle. 

clash  was  a  brier  one.  Just  as  the  J^rench  were  re- 
coiling before  the  British  impact,  WoKe  was  stricken  down  by  a 
bullet,  and  died.  The  surging  mass  of  the  French  was  rolling 
back  upon  the  gates,  when  Montcalm  also  fell.  He  was  carried 
into  the  town  to  die.  The  French  fell  back  within  the  walls 
and  secured  the  gates. 

After  a  while  the  tumult  had  reached  Bougainville,  who  hur- 
ried back  to  fall  upon  the  English ;  but  the  rearguard  under 
Townshend  presented  so  solid  a  front  that  the  French  thought 
it  prudent  to  retire.  The  English  thus  had  opportunity  without 
further  molestation  to  secure  their  position  before  the  town. 
They  passed  the  succeeding  night  in  making  preparation.  The 
morning  revealed  that  the  troops  which  Vaudreuil  vaudreuii 
had  kept  with  him  beyond  the  St.  Charles  had  fled  in  ^®®' 
the  dark,  leaving  their  tents  standing.  The  fugitives  made  a 
forced  march  to  Cape  Jacques  Cartier,  thirty  miles  up  the  St. 
Lawrence.  Here,  as  if  chagrined  at  his  precipitancy,  the  gov- 
ernor sought  to  lead  his  men  back ;  but  he  learned  on  the  way 
tha.t  Ramezay  had  surrendered  Quebec,  and  the  British  were 
now  everywhere  in  possession. 

Thus,  on  the  13th  of  September,  fifteen  minutes  of  heady  and 
riskf ul  conflict  on  the  Plains  of  Abraham  had  practi-  The  vaueys 
cally  settled  the  fate  of  the  St.  Lawrence  valley.    We  sained. 
have  seen  that  a  combat,  not  much  longer  protracted,  coming 
in  the  nick  of  time,  had  near  Niagara  determined  the  future  of 
the  Ohio  basin.     The  campaign  had  been  epochal. 

Munitions  were  thrown  into  Quebec,  Murray  was  placed  in 
command,  and  by  the  middle  of  October  Saunders, 
anxious  to  get  his  ships  out  of  the  river  before  the  ice  commanding 
formed,  sailed  away,  bearing  the  body  of  WoKe.  The 
victory  of  the  Plains  of  Abraham  had  indicated,  but  did  not 
constitute,  the  end.  Before  another  English  fleet  with  rein- 
forcement returned  in  the  spring  of  1760,  the  English  garrison 
in  the  town  had  been  put  to  severe  trials.     A  luckless  battle 


402  THE   OHIO  AND  ST.  LAWRENCE    WON. 

had  taken  place  at  Ste.  Foy,  one  of  the  suburbs  in  which  Mur- 
Battie  of  ^^7  ^^^  taken  risks,  which  came  near  causing  a  re- 
ste.  Foy.  deeming  success  for  the  French,  since  but  for  the 
opportune  appearance  of  the  English  fleet,  as  the  spring  opened, 
Quebec  might  have  again  been  under  the  French  flag. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

THE  TRANSITION   FROM   WAR   TO   WAR. 

1760-1762. 

When,  on  May  9,  1760,  the  leading  ship  of  an  English  fleet 
hove  in  sight  from  the  citadel  of  Quebec,  Murray  saw  that  he 
was  not  to  suffer  all  the  evils  which  his  ill-advised  and  head- 
long onset  at  Ste.  Foy  might  well  have  prepared  for  him.  Levis, 
who,  having  pushed  his  opponent  within  the  walls  of 
Quebec,  was  now  keeping  up  an  artillery  duel  with  from  before 
the  town,  saw  with  dismay  the  English  ships  destroy 
and  scatter  his  auxiliary  force  upon  the  river.  He  accordingly 
fled  with  precipitation,  leaving  guns  and  stores  behind  him. 
He  had  inflicted  upon  Murray  the  loss  of  about  a  third  of  the 
English  force,  and  he  now  found  himself  hurrying  to  Montreal, 
painfully  conscious  that  his  own  sacrifices  had  gained  him  little 
beside  the  well-earned  laurels  of  Ste.  Foy. 

Pitt  had  hardly  counted  on  such  folly  as  Murray  had  shown, 

but  the  fleet  which  he  had  ordered  up  the  river  at 

.  11.11    Ti"®  ''*™" 

as  early  a  moment  as  the  ice  would  permit  showed  paignof 

■"■  1760. 

his  purposes  to  make  the  success  of  Wolfe  some- 
thing more  than  a  barren  "victory.  The  minister  now  looked  to 
Amherst  to  sweep  the  remaining  French  from  the  valley. 
That  commander  was  already  laying  liis  plans  to  converge 
upon  Montreal  with  all  the  forces  at  his  disposal,  and  in  April 
he  had  instructed  Monckton  at  Pittsburgh  to  make  sure  of  his 
communications  with  Niagara,  and  then  to  send  forward  to 
that  post  a  force  sufficient  to  hold  it,  so  that  its  regular  garri- 
son could  join  the  general  advance  upon  the  St.  Lawrence. 

It  was  evident  that  Vaudreuil  and  Levis  were  now  segregat- 
ing all  available  forces  at  Montreal.    They  were  keep-  ^he  French 
ing  out  small  corps  of  observation  down  the  river  and  p^*°*" 
toward   Lake   Champlain,  and  were  determined   to    stand   on 


404  THE   TRANSITION  FROM   WAR    TO    WAR. 

the  defensive  as  long  as  they  could,  in  the  hope  that  the  Eng- 
lish combinations  would  miscarry,  or  some  blunder  be  made  by 
which  the  French  could  profit.  The  English  plan  of  closing  in 
upon  Montreal  upon  three  sides  was  pretty  sure,  if  well  timed, 
to  force  its  surrender ;  but  the  chances  of  war  are  always  open 
to  an  alert  antagonist  held  at  bay,  and  watching  for  breaks  in 
his  adversary's  plans. 

Amherst,  himself  commanding  one  of  these  aggressive  forces, 
Amherst's  ^^^  rcndczvouscd  at  Oswego  about  eleven  thousand 
plans.  men,  including  a  force  of    Indians    under   Johnson. 

Amherst's  part  was  to  advance  through  the  Thousand  Islands, 
capture  Fort  Levis  near  the  head  of  the  rapids,  and  approach 
Montreal  on  the  up-river  side.  Murray  was  to  advance  from 
Quebec  with  twenty-five  hundred  men,  strengthened  with  a 
force  of  thirteen  hundred,  which  Lord  Rollo  had  brought  from 
Louisbourg.  The  third  army,  which  was  to  advance  north 
upon  Lake  Champlain,  had  had  the  way  opened  for  it  the  pre- 
vious season  when  the  threatening  front  of  Amherst  had  forced 
the  French  to  burn  a  part,  at  least,  of  their  flotilla. 

These  lesser  movements  were  reasonably  well  timed.  Bour- 
lamaque,  who  was  watching  Murray,  fell  back  as  that  English 
officer  advanced,  and  Haviland,  commanding  on  Lake  Cham- 
plain,  easily  forced  Bougainville  down  the  Sorel.  These  two 
French  forces  found  no  difficulty  in  joining  Vaudreuil  in  Mon- 
treal, so  that  the  way  was  clear  for  Murray  and  Haviland  to 
put  themselves  into  communication.  When  all  this  was  done, 
Amherst  had  not  yet  appeared  above  the  town.  The  interval 
was  seized  by  the  French  to  send  off  Langlade  in  charge  of  two 
companies  of  English  deserters.  His  instructions  were  to  lead 
them  west  and  send  them  down  to  New  Orleans,  out  of  reach 
of  the  enemy  in  the  event  of  disaster. 

The  French  now  in  and  about  Montreal  numbered,  all  told. 
The  French  scarccly  morc  than  twenty -five  hundred  effectives, 
in  Montreal,  ^j^i^  g^^jj^  g,  force  there  was  little  chance  in  measur- 
ing strength  in  the  open  field  with  Murray  and  Haviland,  while 
Amherst  was  close  at  hand.  The  French  accordingly  abided 
developments.  There  was  not  long  to  wait.  Amherst  soon 
arrived,  and,  joining  all  the  forces,  he  held  an  army  of  seven- 
teen thousand  men  in  his  circumjacent  lines.  There  was  some 
hesitation  on  the  part  of  Vaudreuil  in  approaching  his  doom, 


OCCUPYING    THE    WEST.  405 

mainly  for  the  sake  of  show ;  but  on  September  8,  the  capitula- 
tion was  sifjned.     It  gave  up  not  only  Montreal,  but 

,,    „  1  1     .  1  1  •  All  1  Montreal 

all  Canada  and  its  de])entloncies.     All  troops,  wner-  and  Canada 

.  .  surrendered. 

ever  they  were  stationed,  were  to  become    prisoners  September 
of  war,  later  to  be  transported  to  j  ranee  in  iiritish 
ships.     The  exercise  of  the  Catholic  religion  was  guaranteed, 
and  private  property  was  to  be  respected.     Vaudreuil  had  con- 
tended for  the  preservation  of  the  French  code ;  but  Amherst 
was  stubborn,  and  English  law  was  hereafter  to  govern  the  con- 
quered territory.     The  British  general  did  not  forget  the  sad 
experience  of  his  government  with  the  Acadians,  and  the  folly 
of  anything  short  of  an  absolute  dominion  was  not  to  be  re- 
peated.    So  something  like  sixty-five  thousand  French  were  at 
a  moment  swimg  beneath  the  folds  of  the  banner  of  St.  George, 
as  subjects  of  George  the  Second.     The  news  did  not  reach 
England  in  time  to  gratify  the  old  king,  who  had  in-  George  ii. 
trusted  so  much  to  Pitt.     On  October  25,  George  had  October, 
swooned  in  his  bedchamber,  and  fallen  against  a  chest  ^^^' 
of  drawers.     Thus  he  died.     The  tidings  did  not  reach  Boston 
till  December. 

Precisely  what  the  area  was  that  Vaudreuil's  capitulation 
covered  very  likely  neither  he  nor  Amherst  cared  to  j^^g^  ^f  the 
determine  too  exactly.  At  all  events,  the  terms  given  <=o°<i"«s*- 
and  accepted  were  open  to  later  dispute.  It  was  two  years  and 
more  before  the  diplomatic  disputants  of  the  two  governments 
agreed  upon  the  final  result. 

Amherst  hastened  to  get  control  of  as  much  of  the  west  as 
he  could,  and  did  not  wait  long  before  dispatching  Robert 
Rogers,  the  well-known  partisan  scout,  with  about  two  hundred 
men  in  whaleboats,  —  George  Croghan  was  in  the  party,  —  to 
proceed  along  the  Lakes  and  receive  the  surrender  of  the  distant 
posts.  Passing  by  Niagara  River,  Rogers  entered  Lake  Erie 
and  tarried  for  a  while  at  Presqu'  Isle,  so  as  to  communicate  with 
Monckton  at  Pittsburgh.  On  October  17,  this  officer  Monckton 
notified  Governor  Sharpe  of  Maryland  that  on  the  an^  Rogers. 
previous  evening  he  had  received  Amherst's  orders  to  send 
forward  garrisons  for  Detroit  and  the  other  western  stations. 
He  further  informed  Sharpe  that  he  needed  militia  to  take  the 
place  of  the  royal  Americans,  whom  he  was  to  detach  to  Rogers's 


406  THE   TRANSITION  FROM   WAR    TO    WAR. 

command.  By  November  7,  Rogers,  still  following  the  southern 
shore  of  the  lake,  had  reached  the  mouth  of  a  river  not  easily 
identified,  but  probably  near  the  spot  where  the  modern  Cleve- 
Rogers  and  land  stands.  Here  a  band  of  Ottawas  confronted  him 
Pontiac.  g^jj^  manifested  some  distrust,  which  was  soon,  however, 
overcome.  Rogers  in  his  journal  does  not  mention  that  Pontiac 
was  on  the  spot,  though  in  another  publication  which  passes 
under  his  name.  The  Concise  Account  of  North  America,  Pon- 
tiac is  not  only  represented  as  being  present,  but  as  bearing 
himself  rather  insolently  at  first.  Parkman  and  historians  gen- 
erally have  accepted  the  narrative  of  the  Concise  Account  as 
a  trustworthy  development  of  the  cruder  statements  of  the 
journal;  but  Kingsford,  not  without  reason,  had  been  led  to 
suspect  that  the  Account  was  more  likely  than  not  an  embel- 
lished narrative,  worked  up  as  a  catchpenny  venture  by  the 
publisher.  This  view,  if  accepted,  throws  not  a  little  doubt 
over  the  scene,  in  which  it  has  been  ordinarily  held  that  Pontiac 
for  the  first  time  —  barring  his  conduct  in  the  defeat  of  Brad- 
dock —  stands  forth  in  American  history. 

As  Rogers  approached  the  western  end  of  the  lake,  rumors 
Rogers  and  began  to  rcacli  him  that  Bellestre,  who  commanded  in 
Beiiestre.  Detroit,  was  endeavoring  to  arouse  the  Indians  about 
him,  so  that  he  could  resist  the  English.  Rogers  took  occasion 
to  send  ahead  a  French  prisoner,  whom  he  chanced  to  have,  who 
coidd  give  Bellestre  assurances  of  what  had  happened  at  Mon- 
treal. He  was  also  prepared  to  inform  that  officer  of  the  in- 
structions for  his  guidance  which  Vaudreuil  had  intrusted  to 
Rogers's  care.  The  warning  had  a  good  effect,  and  Rogers, 
landing  below  the  town,  was  politely  received  and  suffered  to 
j)gtyj,it  send  forward  a  detail  to  take  possession  of  the  post. 
occupied.  j^.  ^j^g  Q^  November  29.  1760,  that  the  English  flag 
replaced  the  Bourbon,  and  a  crowd  of  seven  hundred  capering 
savages  vociferously  greeted  the  change. 

Detroit  was  now  a  stockaded  settlement  of  about  one  hundred 
Its  condi-  houses,  givcn  up  to  the  domiciled  French  and  to  the 
tion.  vagrants  who  huddled  about  the  post.     Perhaps  half 

a  hundred  farmsteads,  with  their  rude  buildings,  were  scattered 
up  and  down  the  river  bank.  Various  Indian  villages  dotted 
along  the  stream  showed  how  attractive  the  trading-post  had 
become  to  the  savage  rover.      There  was  a  reminder  of  less 


ALONG   THE  LAKES.  407 

prosperous  times,  when  the  English  saw  the  horses  which  were 
put  to  service  in  the  neighborhood,  for  they  learned  that  they 
were  the  descendants  of  animals  that  had  been  taken  on  Brad- 
dock's  field. 

Parties  were  now  sent  off  to  secure  the  forts  which  the  French 
held  at  the  portages  of  the  Maumee  and  Wabash,  and   Qt,,gr  p^^^g 
open  the  trail  to  Vincennes.     There  were,  perhaps,  at  "'^'^"P'^^- 
this  period  some  three  thousand  French  in  the  Illinois  country, 
but  the  question  of  their  allegiance  was  to  be  left  to  the  diplo- 
mats.    Of  the  posts  at  Mackinac,  Green  Bay,  St.  Joseph,  and 
the  Sault  Ste.  Marie  there  was  no  such  question,  and  Rogers 
started  to  go  to  them.     The  season,  as  it  happened,  was  too  far 
gone,  and  it  was  no  easy  task  to  buffet  with  the  ice  of  Lake 
Huron.     He  accordingly  returned  without  accomplish-  Rogers  re- 
ing  his  object.    Putting  Captain  Campbell  in  charge  of  cec'^mber 
the  post  at  Detroit,  Rogers  started  east  on  December  ^''^^• 
21,  and  on  January  23,  1761,  he  reported  to  the  commander  at 
Fort  Pitt. 

When  the  spring  set  in,  Alexander  Henry,  a  trader,  starting 
from  Montreal,  and  wearing  the  garb  of  a  French-  Alexander 
Canadian,  pushed  on  with  canoes  by  the  Ottawa  route,   MacWnac 
and  established  himself  at  Mackinac.     He  found  the  ^^^^• 
Indians  about  that  post  discontented  with  the  prospects  of  Eng- 
lish rule.     A  few  days  later,  a  force  which  CampbeU  ^he  En  lish 
had  sent  from  Detroit  to  take  possession  of  Mackinac  ^*,ereaPu 
arrived.     Within  a  few  months,  one  after  another  of  *^^  ^*'^^^- 
the  posts  on  the  upper  lakes  saluted  the  English  flag,  and  before 
the  season  closed,  not  a  French  banner  was  floating  through- 
out the  valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Lakes. 

The  feeling  which  Bellestre  had  manifested  at  Detroit,  and 
which  Henry  had  found  at  Mackinac,  showed  that  the   The  Indian 
Indian  problem  was  by  no  means  settled  with  the  van-  Problem. 
ishing  of  the  Bourbon  emblems.     The  relations  of  the  English 
and  the  Indians  were  not  much  changed  by  the  French  becom- 
ing subjects  of  Britain,  and  by  ceasing  to  be  rivals,  for  if  the 
jealousies  of  the  French  were  no  longer  open,  they  were  more 
dangerous  from  being    insidious    and  stealthy.     The  johnson  and 
English  had  produced  a  few  men  who  were  the  equals  of   ^«'*«'"- 
the  French  in  tactful  management  of  the  savage.     Johnson  was 


408  THE    TRANSITION  FROM   WAR    TO    WAR. 

still  a  power,  but  unfortunately  Conrad  Weiserhad  just  died 
(July  13,  1760),  —  a  man  o£  sixty-two,  who  had  given  much  of 
his  life  to  pacifying  the  Indian.  No  one  better  than  Weiser 
appreciated  the  influence  of  gratuities  in  compassing  the  savage 
wiles.  English  and  French  had  long  outbid  each  other 
Frlnchfand  in  tliis  distribution  of  gifts,  and  the  tribes  had  reaped 
savage.  ^^   harvcst.      Without   the    stimulation   of    French 

rivalry,  it  was  likely  the  English  would  fall  off  in  their  gifts. 
Such  a  relaxation  meant  but  one  thing,  —  a  weakening  of  the 
hold  upon  the  Indians.  Nor  was  it  only  this.  The  English 
trader,  having  no  longer  a  rival  in  the  French,  would  find  him- 
self relieved  of  the  necessity  of  fostering  a  sympathetic  address, 
and  would  relapse  into  that  churlish  temper  which  belonged  so 
naturally  to  him,  and  was  particularly  irritating  to  the  Indian. 
In  this  respect  the  English  trader  was  as  a  rule  a  remarkable 
contrast  to  the  French.  Kalm  tells  us  that  while  there  are 
numerous  instances  of  the  Frenchman  becoming  more  Indian 
than  the  savage,  there  is  not  one  of  the  Indian  becoming  a 
Frenchman.  The  half-breed  took  much  more  naturaUy  to  the 
race  of  the  wild  mother  than  to  the  associations  of  the  white 
father. 

If  Weiser  was  no  longer  to  play  the  part  of  mediator,  he 
George  ^^^^   behind  a  hardly  inferior  intercessor  in  George 

and1;he"  Croghau.  Adair  speaks  with  amazement  of  Cro- 
indians.  gban's  succcssful  daring  in  face  of  the  greatest  dan- 
ger. He  wonders  at  the  way  in  which  Croghan  succeeded  in 
"  pleasing  and  reconciling  the  savages."  Such  a  man,  Adair 
contended,  was  worth  more  than  a  garrison  in  troublous  times. 
The  truth  unfortunately  was  that  the  English  traders  were  not 
commonly  prudent,  and  the  French  made  the  most  of  the  defect. 
It  was  mainly  a  question  of  better  trade  with  the  English  and 
of  better  neighbors  with  the  French.  So  it  was  that  in  disas- 
ters which  had  now  overtaken  the  French,  the  Indian  saw  that 
he  was  deprived  of  a  friend  who  respected  his  rights  to  his  an- 
cestral lands,  and  in  the  success  of  the  English  he  saw  no  help 
to  keep  his  heritage  from  vanishing. 

This  preservation  of  his  hunting-ground  was  still  to  be  as  it 
had  been,  the  most  vital  interest  of  the  savage.     The 

The  Easton  ,.\rrrr,  -n  1        T     1  J. 

treaty  of       treaty  of  1758  at  Easton  had  been  an  agreement  on 
the  part  of   the  Pennsylvanians  to  prevent    settlers 


BOUQUET  AND   THE   OHIO   COMPANY.  409 

passing  the  mountains.  It  had  been  approved  by  his  ma- 
jesty's ministers,  and  so  had  all  the  validity  of  a  general  stat- 
ute, though  the  provinces  of  Maryland  and  Virginia  had  not 
formally  acceded  to  it. 

Mouckton,  who  in  May,  1760,  had  succeeded  in  command  of 
the  southern  department,  under  an  appointment  from  Amherst, 
had  so  far  prevailed  with  the  Indians  of  the  Ohio  as  to  get 
their  consent  to  the  founding  of  posts  in  the  wild  country,  with 
only  so  much  land  about  the  stockades  as  would  support  the 
garrisons.  In  this  both  red  and  white  found  their  advantage ; 
but  it  was  quite  otherwise  with  the  unauthorized  settlements  of 
the  frontier  vagrants.  Of  this  latter  class  the  Indians  com- 
plained bitterly.  That  their  complaints  were  justified 
we  have  the  evidence  of  Sir  William  Johnson,  at  the  men  aud  the 
north,  and  of  Stuart,  the  agent  of  the  government  at 
the  south.  It  was  notorious  that  these  frontier  miscreants 
were  debasing  the  savages  with  liquor,  and  then  pretending  to 
purchase  their  lands.  Bouquet,  now  in  immediate  command  at 
Fort  Pitt,  represented  to  the  governor  of  Virginia  that  "  vaga- 
bonds, under  pretense  of  hunting,  were  making  settlements  of 
which  the  Indians  made  frequent  and  grievous  complaints." 
Bouquet  was  a  man  of  high  character,  and  not  very  tolerant  of 
wiles,  as  his  letters  show,  and  it  was  his  aim  as  well  as  his  duty 
to  protect  the  rights  of  these  savage  wards.     Such  a 

1         11  -1    1  1  •   1       1        •  •  c     Bouquet  and 

purpose  was  hardly  reconcilable  with  the  intentions  or  the  Ohio 
the  Ohio  Company,  or  at  least  with  the  aims  of  some 
of  its  agents.  That  body,  now  that  peace  was  in  sight,  was 
preparing  to  profit  by  the  grants  which  had  been  made  to  it 
south  of  the  Ohio,  and  its  agents,  whether  authorized  or  not, 
were  undertaking  to  secure  the  influence  of  Bouquet.  Colonel 
Cresap,  representing  that  company  and  detailing  to  Bouquet 
what  this  officer  calls  a  "  bubble  scheme  of  settling  the  Ohio," 
offered  to  him  in  July,  1760,  a  share  of  twenty-five  thousand 
acres  in  the  company's  grant.  Bouquet  was  polite  but  wary, 
and  significantly  referred  to  the  obligations  of  the  treaty  of 
Easton.  He  pointed  out  how  sure  a  way  it  was  to  bring  the 
confiding  Germans  and  Switzers,  who  were  counted  upon  to  fill 
up  the  land,  into  unmerited  grief  by  setting  up  a  colony  with- 
out first  providing  a  government  for  their  protection  in  a  re- 
gion too  remote  for  support  from  the  established  colonies.    The 


410  THE    TRANSITION  FROM    WAR    TO    WAR. 

correspondence  ended  in  Bouquet  declining  the  bribe.  During 
the  next  few  months,  Boviquet  was  doing  what  he  could  to 
remove  all  interlopers  along  the  Monongahela,  acting  under  the 
Bouquet's  cxprcss  ordcrs  of  Monckton.  His  efforts  failing  of 
tkm^Tcto-  what  he  wished,  in  October,  1761,  he  issued  a  procla- 
ber,  17C1.  mation,  prohibiting  aU  Settlements  beyond' the  moun- 
tains without  the  permission  of  the  general  or  of  the  governors 
of  the  provinces.  Such  licenses  were  to  be  lodged  with  the 
commanding  officer  at  Fort  Pitt.  When  this  document  reached 
Williamsburg,  it  created  not  a  little  uneasiness,  especially  as 
it  placed  offenders  beyond  the  operation  of  the  civil  law,  and 
made  them  amenable  to  martial  law.  On  January  17,*  1762, 
Governor  Fauquier  wrote  in  protest  not  only  to  Bouquet,  but  to 
Amherst.  It  could  have  been  no  satisfaction  to  the  Virginians 
that  Bouquet  was  much  more  inclined  to  open  communication 
with  the  Ohio  by  the  Susquehanna  than  by  the  James.  Bou- 
quet, however,  claimed  no  purpose  of  interfering  with  patented 
rights,  further  than  to  establish  formal  requirements  for  regis- 
tration ;  but  announced  his  purpose  to  deal  stringently  with 
all  unauthorized  invaders  of  this  western  territory.  Amherst 
stood  by  his  subordinate  in  the  position  he  had  taken,  but  cau- 
tioned Bouquet  to  be  discreet,  for  "  no  room  must  be  given  for 
the  colonies  to  complain  of  the  military  power."  Bouquet  was 
not  without  suspicion  that  this  apprehension  in  Williamsburg 
was  to  be  traced  to  the  discontent  in  Virginia  at  his  thwarting 
the  purpose  of  Washington  when  he  caused  Forbes  to  take  his 
line  of  march,  in  1758,  through  Virginia  rather  than  by  the 
Pennsylvania  gaps.  Already,  on  December  11,  1761,  orders 
had  been  issued  to  the  colonial  governors  absolutely  forbidding 
them  to  make  any  grants  of  land  at  variance  with  the  Indian 
rights. 

The  prospect  of  peace  was  already  inciting  a  new  movement 
farther  south.     Daniel  Boone  first  crossed  the  moun- 

Daniel  .  .         ,  _„  _  -  t    i  •  i  i 

Boone  tams  lu  1760,  and  carved  his  name  on  a  beech-tree 

crosses  the  .  ,  .      .  ,  -i 

mountains,  near  tlic  Watauga  Kiver,  where  it  is  to  be  seen  to-day 
1760.  .  *  '  .  . 

it  report  is  true.     He    returned    to   give   a  glowing 

account  of  the  promise  which  the  valley  presented.  Every- 
where the  deciduous  trees  betokened  to  such  an  eye  as  his  the 
richness  of  the  soil.  It  was  to  him  a  harbinger  of  a  future 
landscape  spotted  with  girdled  trees,  with  corn  waving  between 


THE  SOUTHERN  INDIANS.  411 

the  stumps,  and  smoke  ciu-ling  from  the  open  roof  of  the  set- 
tler's cabin.  There  was  to  come  the  house  of  logs  with  a  clay 
chimney,  and  the  woodsman  teaching  his  boy  to  shoot  squirrels 
in  the  head  so  as  to  save  their  skins.  In  the  year  following 
Boone's  venture,  Walker  is  said  to  have  led  a  party  of  nine- 
teen to  hunt  along  the  Tennessee,  and  year  after  year  others 
penetrated  farther  into  the  wilderness. 

Still  farther  south,  the  influence  of  Louisiana  had  not  been 
affected    by   the   surrender    at   Montreal.     Governor 

.  .  The  French 

Bull  of  South  Carolina  complained  that  the  French  and  the 
from  New  Orleans  were  pushing  their  trade  hard  upon 
his  frontiers,  and  were  using  goods  which  had  been  obtained 
from  Rhode  Island.     The  French  were  believed  to  be  urging 
the  Creeks  to  commit  depredations  upon  the  English,  and  the 
Mortar,  the  most  powerful  leader  of  these  Indians,  was  making 
bold  to  assault  one  of  the  frontier  forts.     The  Upper  Creeks 
having  declared  war,  it  was  a  question  whether  anything  could 
be  done  to  prevent  the  defection  spreading  to  the  Lower  Creeks 
and  Cherokees.     Two  traders,  George  Galphin   and  Lachlan 
M'Gilwray,  were  sent  to  stay  the  mischief.     But  the  -nie  chero- 
Cherokees  had  become  implacable.     They  had  never  ^®®^" 
forgotten  the  castigation  they  had  received  from  the  Germans 
of  the  valley  of  Virginia,  when  fallen  upon   as  they  returned 
from  the  Forbes  campaign,  on  the  supposition  that  they  had 
been  stealing  horses  at  the  frontier.     This  tribe  had  now  been 
reduced  to  between  two  and  three  thousand  warriors,  but  they 
were  wary  fighters,  and  were  rendering   existence    along  the 
borders   of    Carolina  a   succession    of   miseries.     It   took  two 
years  to  bring  them  to  terms.     Governor  Lyttleton  forced  them 
one  season  to  go  through  the  form  of  yielding,  but  they  rallied. 
Others  who  swept  through  their  country  laid  villages  waste, 
but  were  balked  at  last.     The  Indians  captured  Fort  Loudon, 
a  post  on  the  Cherokee  River,  and  broke  faith  with  its  garrison, 
a  part  of  which  was  murdered  after  surrendering.     Amherst 
was  finally  forced  into  sending  against  them  a  body  of  twenty- 
six  hundred  Highlanders  under  Grant.     He  scoured  Grant's 
their  country  west  of  the  mountains  for  thirty  days,  thrchrro^ 
and   succeeded  in    forcing   them   to    a   peace.       His  ^^^^' 
treaty  with  them  pushed  the  frontier  forward  seventy  miles,  and 


412  THE   TRANSITION  FROM   WAR   TO    WAR. 

made  it  run  along  the  heads  of  the  streams  flowing  into  the 
Atlantic.  Timberlake,  an  officer  who  was  in  these  movements, 
printed  some  memoirs  a  few  years  later,  in  which  he  tells  how 
he  ventured  boldly  among  them  after  the  peace,  and  found  that 
the  French  had  acquired  a  firm  hold  upon  them,  and  that  it 
was  only  the  allurements  of  the  English  trade  that  finally 
brought  them  to  a  peace. 

But  a  far  greater  difficulty  was  brewing  at  the  north,  des- 
The  Indian  tiucd  to  couvcrt  the  vallcy  of  the  Ohio  into  a  bloody 
discontent  arena.  The  distrust  and  apprehension  which  the 
north.  trader,  Henry,  had  found  among  the  Indians  at  Mack- 

inac was  soon  apparent  to  Campbell  among  the  tribes  by  which 
his  post  at  Detroit  was  surrounded.  He  was  so  convinced  of 
the  coming  danger  that  he  dispatched  messengers  to  the  other 
posts  beyond  him,  advising  their  commandants  to  be  alert. 
When  the  demand  was  made  upon  the  tribes  scattered  along 
the  straits  to  give  up  their  English  prisoners,  they  nearly  all 
readily  complied,  but  the  Wyandots  persisted  in  a  surly  de- 
meanor. With  the  rest,  Campbell  was  beguiled  into  dealing  out 
ammunition  on  the  plea  that  they  were  anxious  to  lend  the 
English  assistance  by  marching  against  the  Cherokees.  But 
this  profession  soon  passed,  and  it  became  evident  that  emis- 
saries of  the  Iroquois  were  exercising  spells  upon  them  which 

boded  no  good.  Such  was  the  condition  when  Sir 
at  Detroit.     William  Johusou  appeared  on  the  scene  (1761),  bound 

to  restore  confidence  if  he  could.  It  seemed  for  a  while 
as  if  he  had  succeeded.  Croghan  felt  that  the  interviews  had 
been  successful,  for  in  October,  1761,  he  reported  to  that  effect 
to  Bouquet,  who  was  now  at  Fort  Pitt.  But  the  repose  was  a 
snare.  The  influence  of  the  French  was  deeper  seated  than  was 
suspected,  and  it  was  nursed  by  the  sympathy  of  their  compa- 
triots at  New  Orleans  and  in  the  Louisiana  settlements.  The 
French  on  the  lower  Mississippi  were  already  looking  to  Span- 
ish support,  and  the  Indians  were  circulating  reports  that  France 
and  Spain  were  only  waiting  the  fitting  moment  to   recover 

Quebec.     What  was  a  rumor  seemed  to  be  confirmed, 

England  and  ,  .  rwrr/^o-i  i  ij. 

Spain  at        whcu,  in  the  sprmg  of  1702,  it  became  known  that 

England,  early  in  January,  had  declared  war  against 

Spain.     The  news  had  reached  Boston  in  March,  when  Han- 


er  to 
the  extreme 
western 


THE  IROQUOIS  AND  MIAMIS.  413 

cock  sent  an  express  to  Amherst  in  New  York,  and  by  May, 
Bouquet  had  transmitted  the  necessary  warnings  to  the  westewi 
posts.  The  Spaniards  were  a  new  enemy  for  the  English  in 
the  interior,  but  the  ease  with  which  they  had  come  from  New 
Mexico  by  the  branches  of  the  Missouri  was  a  warning  that 
what  was  now  territory  in  English  possession  on  the  upper  Mis- 
sissippi arul  Lake  Superior  might  be  open  to  Spanish  p^ng. 
incursions.  The  English  were  prompt  to  send  a  de- 
tachment to  protect  the  traders  in  the  region  of  the  ^°^^^' 
present  Minnesota,  and  in  August,  Gladwin,  commanding  at 
Detroit,  was  directed  to  establish  a  post  on  Lake  Superior. 

Croghan  and  others,  who  were  watching  the  darkening  moods 
of  the  Indians,  were  now  becoming  confirmed  in  the  belief  that 
an  Indian  war  could  not  be  avoided,  and  that  the  hostilities 
would  be  widespread. 

When  the  Iroquois  had  overcome  the  Andastes  and  absorbed 
the  survivors  of  them  in  their  own  villages,  these  adopted  chil- 
dren had  amalgamated  with  their  victors,  and  had  migTated  to 
the  Ohio.  Here  the  conglomerate  body  had  acquired  T^e  Mingoes 
the  name  of  Mingoes.  Affiliating  in  their  new  home  "°®^^y- 
with  the  Delawares,  other  dependents  of  the  Iroquois,  they 
were  nursing  a  long-felt  hatred  of  the  English.  Alexander 
McKee,  a  trader,  was  rejaorting  in  November,  1762,  that  they 
and  their  neighbors  were  making  ready  for  an  outbreak.  Back 
of  the  Mingoes  there  was  the  powerful  influence  of  the  Senecas, 
at  present  the  most  aggressive  of  the  Iroquois  confederacy. 
They  were  probably  largely  responsible  for  the  spread  of 
the  savage  antipathy  which  was  now  imperiling  the  English. 
With  their  thousand  warriors,  these  Indians  had  a  firm  hold 
upon  the  Shawnees,  Delawares,  and  Wyandots,  who  numbered 
together  perhaps  as  many  more  fighting  men.  The  prospect 
was  so  alarming  that  Sir  William  Johnson  was  urging  Tj,g  Iroquois 
the  policy  either  of  removing  all  settlers  from  the  un-  ^""^  Miamis. 
purchased  lands  of  the  Iroquois,  or  of  making  compensation  for 
them.  The  Twightwees  of  the  Wabash  region  had  remained 
so  far  reluctant  to  break  with  the  English,  and  the  thousand 
warriors  which  they  and  the  other  parts  of  the  Miami  confed- 
eracy could  throw  into  the  scale  against  the  French  influence 
constituted  a  ground  for  hope  which  the  English  were  glad  to 
cherish. 


414  THE   TRANSITION  FROM   WAR   TO   WAR. 

Johnson  computed  that  the  united  Iroquois  coukl  put  on  a 
j^^t  £  war-footing  not  far  from  four  thousand  men,  and  that 
warriors.  ^^  western  tribes  coukl  offer  nearly  twice  as  many- 
more,  making  in  the  aggregate  about  twelve  thousand  warriors. 
The  estimate  is  certainly  large  enough,  and  Parkman  doubts  if, 
in  all  the  country  east  of  the  Mississippi,  north  of  the  Ohio,  and 
south  of  the  latitude  of  Lake  Superior,  more  than  ten  thousand 
fighting  Indians  could  at  this  time  be  gathered.  Perhaps  the 
rpjjg  most  effective  force  among  all  these  peoples  was  the 

ottawas.  Ottawas.  They  occupied  what  is  now  known  as  the 
southern  peninsula  of  Michigan,  and  their  influence  stretched 
into  the  area  southeast  of  Lake  Erie.  They  had  been  strong 
contestants  for  their  territorial  rights,  and  had  been  taught  by 
the  French  to  make  pretty  constant  dependence  upon  gifts  for 
favors  rendered.  The  change  of  power  at  Detroit  had  inter- 
fered with  this  supply  of  gratuities,  and  they  had  grown  to 
believe  that  they  were  to  expect  nothing  hereafter  for  their 
concessions.  Strong  in  the  alliances  of  the  Foxes,  Sauks,  and 
other  tribes  about  Mackinac,  they  coidd  lend  to  any  warlike 
purpose  something  like  three  thousand  warriors.  For  their 
viarilance  and  intrigue  the  Ottawas  were  most  to  be  feared  of 
The  Pontiac  ^^  ^hc  wcstcm  tribcs.  It  was  Johnson's  belief  that 
'^^'■-  what  is  known  as  Pontiac's  war  found  its  first  impulse 

among  this  tribe.  When  Pontiac  stood  under  the  great  coun- 
cil elm  of  his  tribe,  near  the  portage  of  the  Maumee,  and 
harangued  his  followers  and  the  delegates  from  his  allies,  he 
was,  in  Johnson's  view,  if  not  the  originator,  the  conspicuous 
embodiment  of  a  rising  power  that  was  to  strike  terror  along 
the  English  border. 

But  there  were  new  political  developments  destined  to  crown 
the  ambition  of  Pitt,  and  which  gave  England  a  portentous 
position  in  North  America,  and  especially  in  the  valley  of 
the  Mississippi,  that  intervened  before  the  actual  outbreak  of 
this  impending  war.  We  need  now  to  consider  the  work  of  the 
diplomats. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

THE   TREATY   OF  PEACE. 

1762-1763. 

The  campaign  of  1760  had  convinced  France  that  the  end 
was  near.     She  had  lost  Canada,  and  with  the  ill  suc- 
cess attending  her  arms  elsewhere,  she  had  little  hope  England  in 
by  victories  on  other  soils  to  regain  her  American  pos- 
sessions.   With  England,  war  and  trade  had  joined  for  her  col- 
onial aggrandizement ;  with  France,  war  had  not  strengthened 
her  colony,  nor  had  trade  developed  it.     It  was  the  necessity  of 
France  to  enter  into  negotiations  for  peace.     She  might  yet  try 
by  diplomacy  to  regain  as  much  as  she  could.     The  vagueness 
of   the  territorial  terms  of  Vaudreuil's  surrender  at  TUetem- 
Montreal  was   something  by  which    her    negotiators  dered'a"^''" 
might  possibly  profit.    It  might,  perhaps,  enable  them  ^""^reai. 
to  throw  as  much  territory  as  possible  within  the  bounds  of 
Louisiana,  and  thus  place  it  outside  the  limits  of  the  English 
conquest.     Vaudreuil  had  evidently  intended  to  leave  just  this 
chance  to  the  diplomats.     The  definition  of  the  boimds  of  what 
he  surrendered  was  vague.     In  the  sequel,  he  claimed  to  have 
included   in  his   capitulation    nothing   south    of    the    territory 
bounded  by  the  height  of  land  at  the  head  of  the  streams  flow- 
ing into  the  basin  of  the  Great  Lakes.     This  seems  to  agree 
with  what  is  shown  in  the  Atlas  Moderne  (Paris,  1762),  in  a 
map  by  Janvier.     The  understanding  of  the  English  was,  or  at 
least  when   the  negotiations  began,  they  claimed,  that  Canada 
included  not  only  the  basin  of  the  Lakes,  but  also  that  of  the 
Wabash  to  the  Ohio,  and  all  west  to  the  Mississippi. 

When,  on  July  15,  1761,  France  proposed  terms  of  peace  to 
England,  she  offered  to  cede  Canada  as  Vaudreuil  sur-  peace  pro- 
rendered  it,  with  bounds  on  Virginia  and  Louisiana.  p°^"'*"  ^^^^' 
The  British  cabinet  in  their  reply,  July  29,  insisted  upon  their 


416 


THE   TREATY   OF  PEACE. 


own  definition  of  Vaudreuil's  surrender,  and  would  not  admit  that 
the  Ohio  coimtry  was  included  in  Louisiana,  or  that  Louisiana 
abutted  on  Virginia.  On  August  5,  the  French  in  a  communi- 
cation shifted  their  ground,  and  while  agreeing  to  cede  Canada 
"  in  the  most  extensive  manner,"  proposed  to  interject  along 
the  western  verge  of  the  Alleghanies  a  neutral  strip  for  the 


OkakaA 


[This  extract  from  Jefferys'  map  shows  the  proposed  neutral  territory,  being  the  gourd-shaped 
area  stretching  from  Carolina  to  the  north  of  Lake  Erie.] 

use  of  the  Indians  and  for  serving  as  a  barrier.  This  neutral 
region  is  shown  in  two  maps  by  Jefferys  of  the  British,  French, 
and  Spanish  settlements  in  North  America,  as  "proposed  by 
M.  de  Bussy  in  1761."  It  included  the  peninsula  north  of 
Lake  Erie,  western  New  York,  eastern  Ohio,  and  the  eastern 
portions  of  Kentucky  and  Tennessee.  In  one  of  the  maps  the 
southern  shore  of  Lake  Erie  is  not  taken  in,  and  in  the  other 
it  is  for  a  larger  part  made  a  portion  of  this  Indian  reservation. 
This  scheme  of  a  neutral  barrier-land,  much  like  another  talked 
of  twenty  years  later,  in    the  preliminary  discussions  of   the 


CANADA    OR   GUADELOUPE?  417 

treaty  of  1782,  was  now  promptly  rejected  on  August  16  by  the 
British  government.  They  insisted  unreservedly  on  the  limits 
of  Vaudreuil's  surrender  as  abutting  on  territory  which  they 
had  always  claimed,  east  of  the  Wabash  and  south  of  the  Ohio. 
They  would  in  no  sense  consider  this  to  be  neutral,  holding- 
it  to  be  already  under  the  protection  of  the  English  by  virtue 
of  treaties  both  with  the  Iroquois  and  the  southern  Indians. 
Nearly  a  month  later,  on  September  13,  France  yielded  to  the 
English  claim  for  the  bounds  of  Canada,  but  not  enough  in 
other  ways  to  satisfy  Pitt. 

This  minister  was  now  reaping  the  penalty  of  his  success, 
and  the  aggrandizement  of  the  Commons,  which  the 
new  king's  friends  thought  he  was  effecting,  raised  up  from  the 
an  opposition  in  the  king's  council,  which  in  October 
forced  his  resignation.     Pitt  had  surmised  the  purpose  of  an 
offensive  alliance  of  France  and  Spain,   and  had  desired  to 
precipitate  action  to  forestall  its  results.     This  was  one  of  the 
test  questions  in  which  he  found  himself  balked  by  warwith 
the  friends  of  the  king ;  but  within  three  months  Bute,   ^p*""'  ^^''^' 
succeeding  to  Pitt's  office,  was  forced  by  developments,  which 
Pitt  had  keenly  anticipated,  to  declare  war  with  Spain  on  Jan- 
uary 4,  1762. 

Negotiations  for  peace  having  so  far  failed,  public  interest 
was  turned  once  more  to  a  question  which  had  been 
in  controversy  for  two  years.     Ever  since  the  faU  of  ada bean- 
Montreal,  it  had  been  apparent  that  there  was  growing  British  em-^ 
up  in  England  among  influential  classes  a  conviction  ^"^^ ' 
that  after  all  it  was  a  questionable  policy  which  would  in  the 
final  treaty  wrest  Canada  from  the  French.     It  was  claimed  by 
such  doubters  that  more  would  be  gained  by  retain-  ^^  ouade- 
ing  the  island  of  Guadeloupe,  which  had  fallen  into  i°"p«^ 
the  British  hands  among  their  West  Indian  conquests. 

To  one  who,  like  Franklin,  held  a  strong*  faith  in  the  sfreat 
domain  which  the  fall  of  Montreal  had  secured,  the  intimation 
of  any  abandonment  of  the  results  of  the  long  war  was  a  pain- 
ful thought,  and  the  strong  feelings  which  he  harbored  made  his 
advocacy  of  the  retention  of  Canada  the  most  notable  Frankiin 
of  a  large  swarm  of  controversial  pamphlets,  called  *""^  Burke. 
forth  by  the  dispute.     The  tracts    on    the    other  side,    which 


418  THE   TREATY   OF  PEACE. 

showed  equal  ability,  sprung  probably  from  tlie  able  pen  of 
William  Burke,  assisted  very  likely  by  his  more  distinguished 
brother. 

Franklin  at  one  time  said  of  England  that  the  little  island 
Their  argu-  ^^^^  "  scarce  euough  of  it  to  keep  one's  shoes  dry,"  and 
ments.  j^g^.  contracted  insularity  had  hardly  fostered  as  yet 

any  dreams  of  imperial  range.  She  could  scarcely  appreciate, 
he  thought,  the  boundless  possibilities  of  such  a  territory  as 
now  lay  open  for  her  colonization.  The  ardent  American 
looked  forward,  with  the  population  doubling  every  quarter  of 
a  century,  to  a  time  when  the  vast  interval  between  the  Alle- 
ghanies  and  the  Mississippi  could  ultimately  house  and  feed  a 
hundred  millions  of  peoj)le.  To  part  with  this  for  the  paltry 
island  of  Guadeloupe  was  simply,  as  he  urged,  the  interest  of  a 
sordid  and  unimaginative  mercantile  spirit,  which  looked  to  the 
present  profits  of  the  sugar  trade,  and  was  unjust  to  the  Ameri- 
can colonies.  "  To  leave  the  French  in  the  possession  of  Can- 
ada, when  it  is  in  our  power  to  remove  them,  and  to  depend  on 
our  own  strength  and  watchfulness  to  prevent  the  mischief  that 
may  attend  it,  is  neither  safe  nor  prudent."  "  Canada  in  the 
hands  of  the  French,"  he  says  again,  "  has  always  stunted  the 
growth  of  our  colonies,"  and  it  was  no  welcome  thought  to 
apprehend  that  in  the  future,  Canada,  still  under  the  French, 
could  render  the  peace  of  America  dependent  upon  the  hazards 
of  European  complications. 

It  was  one  of  the  arguments  of  the  discontents  that  with  the 
retention  of  Canada  the  growth  of  the  seaboard  colonies  west- 
ward would  nurture  "  a  numerous,  hardy,  and  independent  peo- 
ple, who  would  become  useless  and  dangerous  to  Britain,"  while 
with  Canada  restored  to  the  French,  the  colonists  would  find 
that  "  a  neighbor  who  keeps  us  in  awe  is  not  always  the  worst  of 
neighbors."  Such  arguments  as  these  intimated  the  revelations 
that  the  same  generation  was  to  discover  in  the  relations  of  the 
mother  country  and  her  colonies.  Franklin  met  them  by  point- 
ing out  the  slender  chance  of  danger  to  England  with  colonies 
whose  jealousies  had  always  prevented  united  action  in  the  face 
of  the  greatest  necessity  for  it.  But  he  added,  with  an  air  of 
prescience,  "  "When  I  say  such  a  union  is  impossible,  I  mean 
without  the  most  grievous  tyranny  and  oppression."  He  fur- 
ther argued  that  this  spreading  westward  meant  the  fostering  of 


PRELIMINARIES.  419 

an  agricultui-al  people,  not  a  manufacturing  one,  who  would  be 
buyers  and  not  rival  makers  of  English  handicraft  products. 
The  dissentients  also  alleged  that  it  could  not  be  profitable  for 
Great  Britain  to  hold  possessions  two  hundred  miles  beyond  the 
coast  and  back  of  the  mountains,  because  the  expense  of  car- 
riage would  make  merchandise  too  costly  to  be  sold.  To  this 
Franklin  rejjlied,  with  a  clear  perception  of  what  the  Missis- 
sippi might  become,  that  the  Ohio  to  a  sea  power  like  England 
was  really  nearer  to  London  than  the  remote  provinces  of  France 
and  Spain  were  to  their  home  manufactures.  The  arguments 
of  Franklin  were  to  prevail. 

In  the  interval  of  suspended  negotiations,  and  amid  the 
financial  distress  of  France,  and  with  no  military  success  illumi- 
nating the  gloom,  Choiseiil  was  beginning  to  think  that  if  he 
could  not  make  war,  he  could  at  least  bring  peace.  With  a 
party  in  England  thinking  that  this  making  of  war  had 

";         ,  ,  n      T  1  -1      Peace  nego- 

taught  them  how  to  nnd  a  peace,  there  was  no  imped-  tiations  re- 
iment  to  the  resumption  ot  negotiations  in  beptember,   September, 
1762.     In  the  conferences  which  thus  hastened  to  a 
result,  Bute,  now  British  minister,  had  shown  that  he  was  will- 
ing to  accept  less  than  Pitt  had  demanded,  but  nothing  except 
exactions  which  were  still  stringent  could  have  satisfied  the  lurk- 
ing determination  of  the  British  people  to  make  France  drink 
deep  of  her  humility.    Feeling  the  debasement  keenly, 
France  finally  agreed  to  preliminaries  on  November  3.   ries  of  peace. 
The  approval  of  the  terms  was  under  discussion  in  the 
Commons  on  December  9,  when  Pitt,  coming  in  late,  wrapped 
in  flannel,  and  leaning  on  a  crutch,  made  one  of  his  histrionic 
speeches,  in  condemnation  of  the  leniency  of  the  ministry.      It 
was  without  avail,  and  the  House  approved  the  terms.     It  might 
not  have  done  so,  however,  if  it  had  known  that  on  the  same 
day,  at  Fontainebleau,  jS'ovember  3,  Choiseul  and  Grimaldi,  the 
representatives  of  the  crowns  of  France  and  Spain,  had 
agreed  that  what  was  left  of  Louisiana  west  of  the  sion  of  the 
Mississippi,  but  including  the  island  of  New  Orleans  the^Missis-° 
on  the  east  bank,  should  be  transferred  from  the  flag  ^'^^'' 
of  France  to  that  of  Spain.     On  the  13th  and  23d,  respectively, 
this  secret  cession  was  approved  at  the  Eseurial  and  by  Louis, 
though  it  was  not  to  be  known  to  the  world  for  fifteen  months. 


420  THE   TREATY   OF  PEACE. 

It  was  January  21,  1763,  when  Amherst,  in  New  York,  hear- 
Cessation  i^&  ^f  the  preliminary  treaty,  announced  to  Bouquet, 
jarTu^y^i,  ^^^  ^^  "^^^^  Pitt,  the  cessatiou  of  arms.  The  Duke 
1763.  q£  Bedford  acting  for  England,  Choiseul  for  France, 

Grimaldi  for  Spain,  and  Mello  for  Portugal,  the  terms  of 
Definitive  ^^  treaty  were  made  definitive  at  Paris  on  February 
February  1^'  ^^^  ^^®  ratifications  were  exchanged  among  the 
10, 1763.  contracting  powers  a  month  later.  The  promulgation 
of  it  was  made  on  May  4,  and  on  July  31,  Gage,  at  Montreal, 
informed  Egremont  that  he  had  issued  the  proclamation  of 
peace. 

New  France  had  disappeared,  and  not  a  foothold  was  left  to 
New  France  ^^^  Frcnch  Bourbous  ou  the  continent  of  North  Amer- 
disappears.  -^^^  Frauce  had  rej)resented  to  Spain  that  it  was  for 
Spanish  interest  to  encourage  her  American  ambition,  because 
New  France  could  stand  between  the  mines  of  Mexico  and  the 
greedy  English.  Now  she  had  brought  the  Spaniard  and  the 
England's  Englishman  face  to  face  across  the  Mississippi,  but 
greatness.  ^^^  woi'ld  did  uot  as  yet  comprehend  it.  England  had 
never  before  been  so  great  relatively  as  in  this  hour  of  her 
triumph.  Pitt's  dream  of  a  greater  Gallic  degradation  could 
hardly  have  raised  higher  the  fortunes  of  England.  In  Amer- 
ica, at  least,  she  had  reestablished  successfully  all  that  she  had 
ever  gained  by  every  treaty  from  Westphalia  in  1648  down, 
and  she  had  added  to  it.  She  had  renounced,  indeed,  the  sea- 
to-sea  pretensions  of  her  colonial  charters,  but  she  had  silenced 
all  opposition  as  far  west  as  the  Mississippi.  At  the  north  she 
had  acquired  apparently  forever  the  region  of  Acadia,  and  it 
was  no  longer  of  any  moment  what  its  "  ancient  limits  "  were. 
She  had  left  to  France  what  the  treaty  of  Utrecht  had  origi- 
nally secured  for  that  country,  the  two  small  islands  of  St. 
Pierre  and  Miquelon,  "  to  serve  as  a  shelter  to  her  fishermen," 
—  a  pitiful  reminder  to  France  of  her  continental  aspirations. 
We  learn,  however,  what  other  use  she  could  make  of  them 
when  we  find,  in  September,  that  these  islands  were  full  of 
French  goods,  waiting  to  be  smuggled  into  Canada. 

Spain,  in  return  for  the  restoration  of  Cuba,  had  ]jeen  forced 
Florida  to  yield  to  England  another  British  conquest,  namely, 
Spain.  all  those  lands  lying  east  and  southeast  of  the  Missis- 


422  THE   TREATY  OF  PEACE. 

sippi  wliich  were  called  Florida,  and  any  pretensions  she  had  to 
the  parts  about  Mobile  Bay,  which  France  had  occupied,  —  all 
lying  below  31°  of  latitude. 

In  the  north,  Canada  came  into  the  British  empire,  "  with  all 
its  dependencies,"  and  "  in  the  most  ample  form  and 
Hudson's       manner  without  restriction,"  making,  with  the  terri- 
^^'  tory  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  an   uninterrupted 

stretch  of  land  toward  the  Arctic  pole,  as  in  the  Floridian 
peninsula  she  had  almost  touched  the  tropics.  No  one  wel- 
comed this  northern  acquisition  more  than  Governor  Arthur 
Dobbs,  who  saw  in  the  boundless  contiguity  the  chance  of  find- 
ing the  western  passage,  "  which  I  have  hoped  [he  says]  to 
attain  these  thirty  years." 

It  was  of  course  a  question  how  far  the  French  inhabitants 
of  the  St.  Lawrence  valley  would  change  their  alle- 
Canadians  giaucc,  and  they  were  allowed  under  the  treaty  eigh- 
new  condi-  tecu  mouths  iu  wliicli  to  determine  their  future.  If 
they  stayed,  the  "  rites  of  the  Romish  Church  "  were 
to  be  assured  to  them  "  as  far  as  the  laws  of  Great  Britain 
permit."  It  was  found  that  the  change  of  allegiance  was  very 
distasteful  to  the  nobility  and  clergy  ;  but  it  was  thought  that 
the  lower  classes  would  console  themselves  easily.  This  social 
diversity  was  not  strange,  for  the  change  of  lordship  brought  a 
change  of  society  little  palatable  to  the  French,  who  had  known 
the  amenities  of  life  in  the  old  country.  The  feudal  seigneur, 
hedged  about  by  privileges,  free  to  control  the  life  and  limb  of 
the  peasant,  vanished  before  the  English  law.  Egremont,  in 
writing  to  Murray,  August  13,  told  him  to  watch  the  priests, 
for  the  subjection  of  the  rites  of  their  church  to  such  curtail- 
ment as  the  laws  of  England  required  had  been  a  bitter  potion 
to  the  French  negotiators.  "  Every  priest,"  he  added,  "  must 
take  the  oath  of  allegiance.  The  French  king  cannot  interfere 
between  his  Majesty  and  his  new  subjects,  and  no  interference 
in  civil  matters  is  to  be  allowed  from  any  priest." 

The  western  limits  of   the  cession  were  by  "  a  line  drawn 
along   the  middle  of  the  river  Mississippi  from  its  source  to 

Note.    The  opposite  map  ia  from  a  Carte  de  la  Nouvelle  France,  made  for  the  Compagnie 
Franjoise  of  the  West. 


424  THE   TREATY   OF  PEACE. 

the  river  Iberville,  thence  by  said  river  through  lakes  Maure- 
pas  and  Pontchartrain  to  the  sea."  The  navigation 
sippi ^sT'  of  the  Mississippi  was  to  be  free  to  the  subjects  of 
boundary.  Q.j.gj^^  Britain  as  well  as  to  those  of  France  in  its 
whole  extent,  from  its  source  to  the  sea,  and  vessels  of  either 
nation  were  not  to  be  stopped  or  made  subject  to  the  payment 
of  any  duty.  This  was  of  course  agreed  to  by  England  in  ig- 
norance of  the  transmission  of  the  rights  of  France  to  Spain, 
made  on  the  day  of  the  signing  of  the  preliminaries,  and  that 
transmission  produced  later  complications  with  Spain. 

The  bed  of  the  Iberville,  except  at  high  water,  was  above  the 
surface  of  the  Mississippi,  so  that  the  "  island  "  on  which  New 
Orleans  stands  did  not  always  exist ;  but  this  condition  was 
not  embarrassing.  It  was  quite  otherwise  at  the  other  end  of 
the  Mississippi,  and  ignorance  of  the  geography  of  its 
of  the  source  remained  an  obstacle  to  a  clear  definition  of 

bounds  twenty  years  later,  under  the  treaty  of  1782. 
When  the  upper  waters  of  the  Mississippi  were  not  at  this 
time  supposed  to  be  connected  with  the  water-system  of  Hud- 
son's Bay,  the  contemporary  cartographers  placed  the 
river's  source  anywhere  from  latitude  45°  to  55°. 
Jefferys  thought  it  somewhat  above  45°.  Samuel  Dunn,  help- 
ing himself  from  Carver's  views,  put  it,  a  little  later,  under 
46°,  and  he  clusters  several  lakes  about  the  source.  Buache, 
the  French  map-maker,  working  up  the  earlier  drafts  of  Delisle, 
now  forty  years  old,  places  the  fountain  at  46°,  among  the 
Sioux.  A  map  based  on  Danville,  and  using  material  gathered 
by  Governor  Pownall,  puts  the  source  in  a  lake  at  47°,  due 
south  of  the  Lake  of  the  Woods.  The  Dutchman,  Vander  Aa, 
in  1755  puts  the  springs  doubtfully  at  55°,  but  in  1763  he  finds 
reason  to  place  a  little  group  of  three  lakes,  out  of  which  the 
river  flows  from  a  triple  source,  under  49°.  A  French  map, 
prepared  for  the  Company  of  the  West,  establishes  the  head 
under  50°.  Bowen,  in  a  map  produced  to  show  the  treaty 
bounds,  says  the  position  of  the  source  is  uncertain,  but  that  the 
Indians  report  it  under  50°,  and  in  a  marshy  region.  Robert 
Rogers,  in  his  Concise  Account.,  says  that  the  Mississij^pi  rises 

Note.  The  map  on  the  opposite  page  is  from  Vander  Aa's  Canada  (Leyden).  It  shows  tlie 
supposed  source  of  tlie  Mississippi  in  three  lakes  in  lat.  49°  ;  the  Riviere  Longue  of  La  Hontan  ; 
the  river  near  La  Hontan's  lake  supposed  to  flow  to  the  West  Sea ;  and  another  river  with  a 
similar  course  rising  In  the  Lac  des  Panis. 


tir  Hi  I  Ills: 


426  THE   TREATY   OF  PEACE. 

in  a  lake  "  of  considerable  bigness,"  into  which  flows  a  stream 
through  a  notch  in  the  mountains,  carrying  a  red  substance. 

Added  to  this  great  variety  of  opinion  respecting  the  posi- 
tion of  a  distinct  source  of  the  river,  there  were  other  views 
prevalent  among  geographers,  who  still  clung  to  an  older  notion 
of  interlinking  inland  waters,  flowing  in  different  directions. 
It  was  common  for  these  to  connect  the  upper  waters  of  the 
Mississippi  with  a  reticulation  of  lakes  and  streams,  having  a 
dependence  upon  Hudson's  Bay,  and  sometimes  upon  that  mys- 
terious channel  which  formed  a  union  with  the  western  sea. 
Roberts,  an  English  cartographer,  in  1760,  makes  the  Missis- 
sippi rise  in  Lake  Winnipeg.  Palairet,  a  French  map-maker, 
embodying  the  joint  results  of  Bellin,  Danville,  and  Mitchell, 
connects  the  sources  with  Lake  Winnipeg,  though  he  acknow- 
ledges the  upper  parts  of  the  channel  are  little  known.  He 
adds  that  some  suppose  there  is  a  connection  between  the 
Mississippi  or  Missouri  and  the  Manton  [Mandan]  River,  which 
he  represents  by  a  dotted  line  as  flowing  ultimately  into  the 
Sea  of  the  West.  This  same  device  of  an  uncertain  dotted  line 
is  used  by  Emanuel  Bowen,  in  1763,  to  join  the  upper  Missis- 
sippi with  the  Red  River  of  the  North.  The  Neptune  Fran- 
gaise  has  no  hesitancy  in  connecting  the  Mississippi  witli  Lake 
Winnipeg,  and  a  most  wonderful  network  of  waters  is  sup- 
posed by  Vander  Aa  on  a  map  of  1755,  where  the  Mississippi, 
Winnipeg,  Lake  Superior,  and  Hudson's  Bay  are  all  brought 
into  a  single  system  of  communication.  A  few  years  later 
(1776),  Jeff erys  connects  Winnipeg  with  a  fanciful  inlet  on  the 
Pacific  coast,  which  D'Aguilar  is  supposed  to  have  entered 
in  1603,  forming  that  water-way  to  the  Sea  of  the  West  so 
long  sought.  Explorers  in  this  region  were  still  beguiled  by 
the  increasing  Indian  tales  of  the  connection  of  the 
the  wistem  Missouri  by  means  of  a  string  of  interjacent  lakes 
with  the  South  Sea,  and  there  were  stories  among 
the  Dacotahs  which  shortly  after  this  induced  Carver  to  be- 
lieve that  the  Shining  Mountains  [Rockies]  stretched  from 
about  48°  north  latitude  toward  the  south,  and  divided  the 
waters  flowing  into  the  gulfs  of  Mexico  and  California.  He 
suspected  that  north  of  48°  there  was  a  water-system  some- 
how connecting  Hudson's  Bay  with  the  Pacific,  and  lying 
somewhere  thereaway  were  the  Straits  of  Anian,  "  which  hav- 


[From  the  Gentleman''s  Magazine,  December,  1755.  It  shows  the  popular  notion  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi having  its  rise  in  the  latitude  of  the  southern  end  of  Hudson's  Bay,  and  indicates  the 
supposed  River  of  the  West.] 


428  THE   TREATY  OF  PEACE. 

ing  been  discovered  by  Sir  Francis  Drake  belong  of  course  to 
the  English." 

Such  was  the  vagnie  knowledge  of  this  *  northwest  region 
Royal  proc-  whcu,  on  Octobcr  7, 1763,  the  English  king  in  a  proc- 
octobeT7°*  lamation,  issued  with  the  concurrence  of  his  council, 
^'^^'^-  and  in  disregard  of  the   sea-to-sea  charters,  —  which 

Kitchin,  in  his  map  made  to  mark  the  conditions  of  the  peace, 
had  been  prompt  to  revive  and  extend  as  far  as  the  Mississippi, 
Crown  —  established  as  crown  lands,  to  be  held  for  the  ben- 

lands.  gg|.  q£  ^jjg  Indians,  all  this  vast  region  between  the 

Alleghanies  and  the  Mississippi,  wherever  in  the  north  its  source 
might  be. 

This  proclamation  had  set  up  three  new  governments  in  North 
Tjjgt^o  America,  outside  the  preexisting  seaboard  colonies. 
Fioridas.  ^^^o  of  thcsc  ucw  proviuccs  wcrc  carved  out  of  the 
accessions  yielded  by  Spain  along  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  to  be 
respectively  East  and  West  Florida.  They  were  to  be  bounded 
north  by  the  thirty-first  parallel,  and  to  extend  from  the  Mis- 
sissippi, with  some  deflections,  to  the  Atlantic.  By  this  a  re- 
gion which  had  been  in  dispute  between  Georgia  and  Spain, 
embracing  the  territory  from  the  St.  Mary's  River  to  the  Alta- 
maha,  was  added  to  Georgia.  The  settling  of  this  and  other 
vexed  questions  long  subsisting  between  the  Carolinians  and 
the  French  soon  had  the  effect  to  force  the  Indians  of  the  gulf 
water-shed  to  conclude  a  peace.  Later,  in  1764,  the  western 
part  of  the  northern  line  was  removed  from  31°  north  to  the 
parallel  of  the  mouth  of  the  Yazoo,  the  source  of  future  diffi- 
culties. 

In  Canada,  the  new  province  of  Quebec  was  a  good  deal  cur- 
Boundsof  tailed  from  the  extent  which  had  constituted  what 
Quebec.  Vaudreuil  had  governed.  The  definitions  of  bounds 
given  in  the  proclamation  do  not  agree  with  modern  geography; 
but  the  province  was  confined  approximately  on  the  north  by 
the  water-shed  of  Hudson's  Bay.  The  noi'thern  line  then  ex- 
tended west  to  Lake  Nepissing,  taking  in  the  Ottawa  up  to  the 
portage  to  Lake  Huron.  It  was  bounded  on  the  south  by  a 
due  east  line,  which,  in  crossing  the  St.  Lawrence  and  Lake 
Champlain,  was  supposed  to  follow  the  forty-fifth  parallel,  the 


430  THE   TREATY  OF  PEACE. 

present  northern  limits  of  New  York  and  Vermont,  till  it 
struck  a  height  of  land  along  the  heads  of  rivers  flowing  into 
the  St.  Lawrence,  —  the  source  of  disputes,  which  were  only 
ended  by  the  compromise  of  Lord  Ashburton  and  Webster 
in  the  treaty  of  1842.  The  western  limitation  of  Quebec  was 
contrary  to  the  advice  of  Murray,  who  desired  the  Mississippi 
for  the  farther  boundary  of  the  province,  but  his  views  were 
overruled  in  the  king's  council. 

The  object  of  the  council  was,  as  we  have  seen,  to  make  this 
The  crown  Western  expanse  an  area  of  crown  lands,  "  for  the  use 
lands.  q£  ^q  Indians  for  the  pi^esent,  and  until  our  further 

pleasure  is  known."  There  was  in  this  reserved  possibility 
some  recognition  of  the  likely  demands  of  the  future,  which 
Franklin  had  foreshadowed.  Washington  is  known  to  have 
looked  upon  the  proclamation  as  a  temporary  expedient  for 
quieting  the  Indians.  Nevertheless,  its  promulgation  was  unex- 
pected, and  was  very  generally  considered  an  affront  to  the  col- 
onies, and  an  interference  with  their  natural  right  to  subdue 
the  earth.  The  conservative  adherents  of  the  crown  regarded 
it  simply  as  a  needful  protection  to  the  Indian.  The  party  of 
progress  called  it  a  tyrannous  check  on  the  inevitable  expansion 
of  the  race.  There  was  right  on  both  sides.  It  had  been  the 
policy  of  France  from  the  beginning,  in  preserving  game-fields, 
really  to  put  restraint  upon  settlements,  and  it  had  been  the 
great  cause  of  her  misfortunes.  The  English  had  not  failed  to 
comment  in  their  own  favor  on  the  different  policy  which  had 
governed  their  progress.  It  was  not  now  pleasant  for  the  colo- 
nists to  see  their  home  government  slide  into  what  was  recog- 
nized as  the  French  system.  Edmund  Burke,  representing  the 
aversion  which  this  new  policy  had  aroused  in  England,  pro- 
tested against  such  an  attempt  "  to  keep  as  a  lair  of  wild  beasts 
that  earth  which  God,  by  an  express  charter,  has  given  to  the 
children  of  men." 

The  proclamation,  in  set  terms,  prohibited  the  governors  of 
Quebec  and  of  East  and  West  Florida  from  granting  any 
patents  for  lands  beyond  their  bounds  ;  and  the  governors  of 
the  Atlantic  colonies  were  restrained  from  allotting  any  lands 
beyond  the  heads  or  sources  of  the  rivers  which  fall  into  the 
Atlantic  Ocean,  or  upon  any  lands  reserved  to  the  Indians,  and 
not  having  been  ceded  to,  or  purchased  by,  the  king.     The 


THE  ROYAL  PROCLAMATION.  431 

edict  also  made  reservation  of  all  land  not  included  in  the  three 
new  governments  and  in  the  Hudson  Bay  Company's  possession, 
and  lying  westward  of  the  sources  aforesaid,  "  for  the  use  of 
tlie  Indians,  and  no  one  could,  under  pain  of  the  king's  dis- 
pleasiu'e,  take  possession  of  any  such  reserved  lands  without 
the  king's  leave,  and  all  persons  having  already  done  so  were 
required  to  remove.  All  private  persons  were  forbidden  to  buy 
lands  of  the  Indians ;  "  but  if  at  any  time  any  of  the  Indians 
were  inclined  to  sell,  it  should  only  be  to  some  one  represent- 
ing the  crown. 

There  was  doubtless  in  all  this  a  number  of  objects  to  be 
gained.  One  was  to  limit  the  old  colonies  by  the  moun-  -The  purpose 
tains,  and  to  discredit  the  old  charters.  Another  was  °^  ^^^  '^^* 
to  keep  the  population  within  easy  reach  of  the  British  trade. 
A  third  was  to  keep  the  populace  under  the  restraint  of  the  sea- 
board authorities.  Hillsborough,  when  put  to  the  question  in 
1772,  made  no  secret  that  this  was  the  purpose,  though  regard 
for  the  Indian  was  made  the  essential  object  then,  and  has  been 
held  to  have  been  so  since.  It  is  quite  natural  to  suppose  there 
was  a  large  interfusion  of  various  reasons. 

We  shall  next  see  that  as  a  measure  of  pacifying  the  Indians 
it  was  too  late  and  of  little  effect. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE   EFFECT   UPON   THE   INDIANS. 

1763-1765. 

The  uneasiness  among  the  western  Indians,  of  vvhicli  men- 
tion has  already  been  made,  had,  in  the  spring  of  1763, 
Indians  un-    become  threatening.     There  was  a  rising  determina- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  tribes  to  forestall  renewed  en- 
croachments on  the  Indians'  hunting-grounds,  which  to  the  sav- 
age mind  seemed  inevitable  while  the  English  were  unchecked 
masters  of   the  field.     Johnson  thought  the  readiest 
Johnson's      meaus  of  counteracting  a  hostile  rising  was  to  define 
with  exactness  some  property  line,  beyond  which  the 
Indians'  possessions  should  be  sacred ;  but  even    this,   in  his 
judgment,  could    not    maintain  the  peace  without  some  syste- 
matic plan  of  gratuities  for  propitiating  the  tribes.     He  urged 
at  the  same  time  that  steps  should  be  taken  to  buy  from  the 
natives  the  country  along  the  east  bank  of  the  Mississippi,  from 
the  Ohio  to  the  Illinois,  and  to  make  it  a  centre  of  trade,  in 
order  to  prevent  the  Indians  following  the  French  to  the  western 
side  of  the  river.     He  was  not  alone  in  urging  this  project,  for 
he  had  the  countenance  of  Croghan. 

When  this  entire  region  north  of  the  Ohio  came  into  the 
British  hands,  there  were  in  it  a  few  thousand  French 

The  east 

bank  of  the  residents,  traders  in  the  main,  the  validity  of  whose 
rights  to  the  soil  was  recognized  by  the  victors.  The 
estimates  of  their  numbers  are  various,  but  it  is  probable  there 
were  about  twelve  hundred  adults  and  eight  hundred  children. 
Making  part  of  their  communities  were  also  about  nine  hundred 
blacks.  A  movement  had  naturally  and  very  soon  begun  among 
them  to  seek  the  cover  of  their  own  flag  across  the  Mississippi. 
This  impulse  was  in  entire  ignorance  of  the  secret  transfer  of 
that  country  by  France  to  Spain.     It  was  in  August,  1763,  that 


ST.  LOUIS.  433 

Laclede,  representing  a  fur  company,  and  a  i)arty  of  followers 
left  New  Orleans  with  the  expectation  of  establishing  Laci6de 
a  post  in  the  Illinois  country.  Arrived  there  in  1764,  Louisf" 
and  hearing  of  the  provisions  of  the  peace,  he  had  ^'^''3-04. 
determined  upon  placing  his  station  on  the  western  side  of  the 
Mississippi.  On  the  spot  where  now  stands  the  city  of  St. 
Louis,  two  Frenchmen,  Chouteau  by  name,  had  set  up  a  trading- 
lodge  in  the  previous  winter,  and  here  Laclede  established  his 
new  station.  It  was  not  long  before  a  third  part  of  the  whites 
and  a  greater  proportion  of  the  negroes  left  their  old  villages 
on  the  eastern  side  of  the  river,  and  gathered  under  the  Bour- 
bon flag  at  this  spot.  Hutchins,  a  little  later,  spoke  of  the  new 
settlement  as  "  the  most  healthy  and  pleasurable  situation  of 
any  known  in  this  part  of  the  country.  Here  the  Spanish 
commandant  and  the  principal  Indian  traders  reside,  who,  by 
conciliating  the  affections  of  the  natives,  have  drawn  all  the 
Indian  trade  of  the  Missouri,  part  of  that  of  the  Mississippi 
(northward)  and  of  the  tribes  of  Indians  residing  near  the 
Ouisconsin  and  Illinois  rivers,  to  this  village." 

This  exodus  of  the  French  from  what  was  now  British  ter- 
ritory was  not  lost  upon  the  western  Indians,  and  they  were 
become  more  than  ever  conscious  that  it  was  with  the  English 
cupidity  for  land  they  were  thus  left  to  deal,  and  without  French 
support.  The  discontent  thus  increased  became  a  sav-  -p^g  Indiana 
age  revenge  when  stories,  told  them  by  the  French,  dis-  '"<=ensed. 
closed  the  English  purpose  to  possess  their  country  by  exter- 
minating its  rightful  owners. 

The  British  government  was  not  long  in  getting  intelligence 
of  this  condition  at  the  west,  while  at  the  same  time  it  was 
learning  of  disturbances  every  way  similar  among  the  southern 
Indians,  fostered,  as  was  believed,  by  the  French  at  New  Or- 
leans and  its  dependent  posts.  As  a  heljj  to  counteract  this 
mischief,  a  large  amount  of  gifts,  to  the  value  of  some  four  or 
five  thousand  pounds,  had  been  sent  over  to  Charleston.  There 
was  no  such  liberal  policy  pursued  with  the  western  Indians, 
and  Croghan  complained  in  the  sjoring  of  1763  that  Amherst 
had  pursued  a  too  niggard  policy  with  the  savages.  Croghan 
explained  the  situation  to  Bouquet  in  May  :  "  Since  croghan's 
the  reduction  of  Canada,  the  several  Indian  nations  ^'®"*- 
this  way  have  been  very  jealous  of  his  Majesty's  growing  power  in 


434  THE  EFFECT   UPON   THE  INDIANS. 

this  country,  but  this  last  account  of  so  much  of  North  America 
being  ceded  to  Great  Britain  has  almost  driven  them  to  despair. 
.  .  .  You  will  find  the  Cherokees  our  enemies,  though  they 
seem  very  quiet  on  the  frontiers  of  Carolina.  What  obliged 
them  to  be  so  is  nothing  else  than  the  war  which  the  western 
nations  have  carried  on  against  them  with  great  spirit  this  two 
years  past.  They  have  been  this  winter  endeavoring  to  accom- 
modate matters,  which  if  they  shoidd  do  may  give  us  more 
trouble  than  we  expect."  The  trouble  was  already  at  hand 
throughout  the  entire  northwest. 

Just  before  this,  Croghan  had  written  to  Amherst  that  the 
Indians  about  Detroit  rebelled  at  the  audacity  of  the  French  in 
ceding  the  Indian  lands  to  the  English.  Just  at  the  critical 
moment,  the  general  reijlied  rather  haughtily  that  it  was  of  no 
consequence  what  the  Indians  thought.  They  should  under- 
stand, he  said,  that  it  is  for  their  interest  to  keep  quiet.  This 
Gladwin  at  ^^^  j)recisely  what  they  did  not  intend  to  do.  Glad- 
Detroit.  ^jj^^  ^j^Q  commanded  at  Detroit,  was  quite  aware  of 
the  rising  rebellion,  and  in  April  had  sent  words  of  warning 
to  Sandusky  and  other  posts.  On  the  27th  of  that  month, 
Pontiacin  Poiitiac  was  iu  council  with  the  warriors  which  his 
council.  runners  had  assembled  from  far  and  near.  The  Otta- 
was,  —  his  own  people,  —  Ojib ways,  and  Pottawattamies  were 
particularly  subservient  to  his  powerful  will.  Pontiac  was 
now  a  man  of  fifty,  and  his  pleadings  had  had  their  effect  as 
far  south  as  the  lower  Mississippi,  and  as  far  east  as  the  Iro- 
quois country.  It  was  here  that  the  Senecas  had  yielded  to 
the  movement,  if  indeed  they  had  not  been  the  first,  or  among 
the  first,  to  give  it  impetus. 

The  plan  which  the  conspiring  tribes  had  agreed  upon  was 
Pontiac  war.  ^^  make  a  simultaneous  attack  on  a  given  day  upon  all 
^^^"  the  forts  from  Pennsylvania  to  Lake  Superior.     The 

stroke  was  to  fall  in  May.  The  war  for  a  single  season  (1763) 
was  vigorously  pushed.  It  affords  the  student  some  of  the 
most  striking  episodes  in  savage  warfare.  It  was  carried  on 
with  an  animated  spirit  of  desperation.  Never  before  had  the 
frontier  settlements  been  pressed  so  rancorously.  Two  thou- 
sand settlers  are  said  to  have  been  killed  along  the  borders, 
outside  the  armed  posts.  The  savage  foe  burst  through  passes 
of  the  mountains  too  numerous  to  be  guarded.     Every  white 


THE  PONTIAC    WAR. 


435 


man  was  driven  from  the  Ohio  and  its  upper  tributaries.  Every 
post  that  the  French  had  spared  along  the  river  was  destroyed, 
and  all  the  settlements  within  reach  of  Fort  Pitt  were  up- 
rooted. 


There  is  no  occasion  to  repeat  a  story  so  graphically  told  in  its 
striking  details  by  Parkman,  and  it  answers  our  pres-  x^e  EngUsh 
ent  purpose  merely  to  show  how  the  English  were  *'^™ed. 
awakened  to  a  sense  of  their  insecurity.  By  the  last  of  May, 
rumors  had  reached  Fort  Pitt  of  the  faU  of  the  stockade  at 
Sandusky,  and  within  a  month  reports  came  in  of  devastations 


2     r>     «      .  W^W 


Pi  I  5  4  «  "^  - «  i  #^ 


^ 


Note.    The  cut  on  the  opposite  page  attaches  to  this  one  at  the  left  hand  edge. 


438  THE  EFFECT   UPON   THE  INDIANS. 

all  along  the  Pennsylvania  borders.  Early  in  June,  Croglian, 
then  at  Carlisle,  reported  that  the  Delawares,  who  had  been 
waiting  developments,  had  gone  over  to  the  enemy. 

It  was  Croghan's  belief  that  the  French  were  the  real  in- 
stigators of  this  outbreak,  not  so  much  with  the  hope  of  mak- 
ing it  successful  as  with  the  expectation  that  the  beaten  savages 
would  seek  an  asylum  under  the  Bourbon  flag  beyond  the  Mis- 
sissippi. They  could  thus  sustain  the  trade  they  were  trying 
to  build  up  by  wresting  much  of  it  from  the  English.  In  June,  a 
pack  of  huddled  settlers  were  crouching  before  an  attack  upon 
Fort  Ligonier,  and  Fort  Bedford  was  preparing  for  the  worst. 
The  lesser  posts  near  Fort  Cumberland  were  pouring  their 
people  into  that  refuge. 

Bouquet,  now  in  Philadelphia,  heard  of  the  rising,  but  the 
stories  were  so  contradictory  that  he  was  perplexed  what  to 
believe.  Amherst  thought  it  nothing  but  a  rash  attempt  of  the 
Senecas.  By  June  12,  both  Bouquet  and  the  general  had  found 
that  they  must  accept  the  worst.  Croghan,  at  Fort  Bedford, 
while  communication  was  cut  with  Fort  Pitt,  believed  this  latter 
Forts  post  to  be  invested.     The  truth  was  that  on  the  next 

taken.  ^^j  after  Croghan  wrote,  Le  Boeuf  had  been  aban- 

doned (June  18).  Presqu'  Isle  and  Venango  were  also  taken, 
and  their  garrisons  massacred.  On  June  23  and  24,  a  sharp 
attack  had  been  made  on  Fort  Pitt  itself,  but  without  success. 

During  Jnly,  Bouquet  was  struggling  to  organize  a  relieving 
force,  but  he  found  the  loss  of  Presqu'  Isle  had  disarranged  his 
plans,  and  the  occupation  of  the  passes  by  the  enemy  prevented 
his  getting  needful  information  of  their  movements.  To  harass 
him  further,  the  Pennsylvania  authorities,  who  had  gathered  a 
force  for  the  borders,  refused  to  put  it  under  his  control. 

Marching  from  Carlisle,  Bouquet  was  attacked  at  Edge  Hill, 
near  Bushy  Run,  twenty-six  miles  from  Fort  Pitt, 
and  Bushy  whcrc  he  suffered  a  loss  of  sixty  men.  He  had  gained 
some  advantages,  chiefly  by  the  good  behavior  of  the 
forty-second  regiment.  They  had  shown  that  regulars  could 
meet  the  savage  with  his  own  tactics.  At  the  day's  close,  Bou- 
quet had  written  to  Amherst,  not  in  the  best  of  spirits,  regret- 
ting that  his  train  prevented  his  following  up  what  advantages 
he  had  gained,  and  expecting  the  battle  to  be  renewed  in  the 
morning.    The  day  brought  the  savage  host  once  more  upon  him. 


[From  the  3fap  of  Pennsylranin ,  chiefly  from  (he  Map  of  W.  Snill,  J 770  (London :  Sayer  and 
Bennett,  1775),  showing  the  place  of  Bouquet's  fight.  Croghan  calls  Scull's  map  a  deception,  and 
says  that  Fort  Pitt  was  put  in  it  tliirteen  miles  farther  north  than  its  actual  situation,  in  order  to 
place  it  on  the  same  parallel  witli  tlie  bend  in  the  Delaware  at  Easton,  and  so  bring  it  witliin  the  five 
degrees  west  from  that  river  which  constitute  the  western  extension  of  Pennsylvania  under  the 
charter.] 


440  THE  EFFECT   UPON   THE  INDIANS. 

He  now  found  it  to  consist  of  Delawares,  Shawnees,  Wyandots, 
and  Mingoes.  He  lured  them  into  a  disordered  onset  by  a  feigned 
retreat,  and  then  turned  and  completely  routed  them.  His  loss 
for  the  two  days  was  one  hundred  and  fifteen,  and  on  August 
11  he  was  at  Fort  Pitt,  which  had  successfully  stood  a  siege  of 
five  days.  Here  he  wrote  to  Amherst  that  his  two  days'  fight- 
ing at  Edge  Hill  had  given  the  savages  the  "  most  complete 
defeat  they  had  ever  received  in  the  woods."  It  had  indeed 
cleared  the  country  of  every  foe  between  the  settlements  and 
Fort  Pitt.  Later,  in  September,  Bouquet  reported  to  Governor 
Hamilton  that  the  Indians  were  stunned  by  their  defeat,  and 
later  still,  as  the  influence  of  his  movement  became  more  ap- 
parent, he  was  confident  that  with  seven  hundred  men  he  could 
drive  the  enemy  beyond  the  Mississippi. 

The  campaign  for  the  season  was  evidently  over,  but  there 
was  no  hope  that  the  next  year  would  not  reveal  the  necessity 
of  vigorous  action.  Johnson  told  Amherst  that  the  French 
would  no  doubt  continue  to  supply  the  Indians  with  ammuni- 
tion, by  way  of  the  Mississippi,  and  would  in  the  mean  whUe 
engross  the  western  trade  by  the  same  channel.  This  induced 
the  general  to  instruct  the  commander  at  Mobile  to  prevent,  if 
possible,  any  such  help  from  the  side  of  the  Gulf.  During  the 
autumn,  there  were  small  packs  of  Indians  spreading  dismay 
along  the  Virginia  borders,  but  at  the  north  Croghan  reported 
that  all  was  quiet,  except  among  the  Senecas. 

The  result  of  the  summer's  hostilities  was  in  a  measure  assur- 
The  resvdts  ^^a'  There  was  no  longer  doubt  that  the  strongest 
force  which  could  be  raised  would  be  necessary  for  the 
next  year's  work  ;  but  that  an  adequate  force,  directed 
by  such  ability  as  Bouquet  had  shown,  could  successfully  en- 
counter the  savages  in  the  woods  seemed  to  have  been  made 
certain  by  what  that  officer  had  already  done. 

There  was,  indeed,  a  wide  field  to  regain.  Detroit  and  Fort 
Pitt  had  alone  braved  the  attacks  upon  them.  Green  Bay  and 
Sault  Ste.  Marie  had  been  abandoned.  The  garrison  at  Mack- 
inac had  been  massacred.  When,  in  August,  the  survivors  of 
the  most  western  stations  reached  Montreal,  not  a  British  flag 
was  left  flying  west  of  Detroit.  The  forts  at  Sandusky,  Miami, 
St.  Joseph,  Ouiatanon,  Presqu'  Isle,  and  Venango  had  all  been 
captured  by  the  conspirators. 


of  the 

summer's 

war. 


BRADSTREET'S  MOVEMENTS.  441 

The  news  of  the  proclamation  of  October  7  was  not  received 
till   it  had  become  necessary  to  suppress  rather  than  Theprocia- 
pacify  the  Indians,  and  it  was  likely  to  have  little  ef-  octob"r°7, 
feet,  except  upon  the  whites.     In  November,  Amherst   ^'''^• 
had  sailed  from  New  York  for  England,  and  the  command  in 
America  now  devolved  on  Thomas  Gage.     He  had  re- 

.  ,,  ,         TT-        1  Gage  com' 

centlvbeen  in  authority  at  Montreal.     His  plans  were  mander-in- 

.  .  ....  clxief. 

soon  laid  for  pushing  forces  into  the  Mississippi  re- 
gion, using  both  Fort  Pitt  and  Mobile  as  his  bases.     But  he 
soon  found  his  hands  full  of  other  duties. 

Late  in  January,  1764,  he  wrote  to  Bouquet  to  come  to  New 
York  and  determine  upon  plans  for  the  summer's  cam-  campaign 
paign.    By  April,  the  plans  were  well  in  hand.    Gage  °*  ^'^• 
had  put  Bouquet  in  charge  of  all  forces  in  Philadelphia  and 
south  of  it,  and  had  urged  the  governors  of  Virginia  and  Mary- 
land to  put  their  local  militia  under  his  direction. 

To  prepare  the  way  for  a  northern  advance,  Jolinson,  on 
April  3,  brought  the  Senecas  to  a  peace,  by  which  the  ^he  north- 
crown  secured  a  large  tract  of  land  on  the  Niagara  uLder^^^'^^ 
River.  This  opened  a  route  toward  Sandusky  by  ^""^^d^t'eet. 
the  southern  shore  of  Lake  Erie,  and  this  part  of  the  western 
advance  was  intrusted  to  the  command  of  Colonel  Bradstreet. 
He  took  along  with  him  a  force  sufficient  to  give  the  Indians 
the  effective  chastisement  which  was  expected  of  him.  Brad- 
street  had  enlisted  a  contingent  of  French  Canadians  in  the 
hope  to  convince  the  Indians  of  the  hopelessness  of  a  French 
defection.  He  lingered  at  Niagara  in  order  to  protect  John- 
son, who  was  still  negotiating  with  the  neighboring  tribes,  and 
in  August  pushed  on  to  Erie. 

At  Presqu'  Isle,  on  August  12,  evidently  in  the  expectation 
of  reaping  the  glory  of  closing  the  war,  he  agreed  to  Bradstreet'a 
a  peace  with  an  irresponsible  party  of  Slia\vnees  and  *'"®^*y- 
Delawares.  These  scheming  savages  had  planned  to  quiet 
Bradstreet  by  some  sort  of  treaty,  while  their  confederates  far- 
ther south  were  to  gain  time  for  renewed  excesses  along  the  bor- 
der. By  the  pliant  terms  of  the  treaty,  the  Indians  ceded  the 
existing  posts,  and  granted  sites  for  any  others  which  the  Eng- 
lish might  find  it  desirable  to  build.  The  whites  were  to  have 
adjacent  tillage  lands,  extending  as  far  as  a  cannon-shot  could 
reach.     The  savages  gave  hostages,  and  promised  to  deliver  all 


442  THE  EFFECT   UPON   THE  INDIANS. 

murderers  of  the  English  at  Fort  Pitt,  and  within  twenty-five 
days  to  surrender  at  Sandusky  all  prisoners  then  in  their  hands. 
On  Bradstreet's  pushing  on  to  Sandusky,  there  were  no  signs 
of  the  expected  prisoners.  The  Indians,  pursuing  their  beguil- 
ing policy,  promised  more  definite  agreements  at  Detroit.  Ar- 
rived here,  the  little  army  relieved  the  weary  garrison,  and 
sent  forward  detachments  to  take  possession  of  Mackinac,  the 
Bradstreet  Sault,  and  Grccn  Bay.  On  September  10,  Bradstreet 
at  Detroit,  arranged  a  new  conference  ;  but  Pontiac  was  sulking 
at  the  Maumee  rapids,  and  would  not  come  to  it.  Those  who 
came  made  a  feeble  outward  show  of  submission,  which  satisfied 
Bradstreet,  and  then  he  started  east. 

On  August  23,  Grant,  at  Fort  Pitt,  had  heard  of  the  Erie 
treaty,  and  dispatched   messengers   at  once  to  Gage 

Gage  disap-  ^  '  ±  o  o 

proves  the     and  to  BouQuct.     Neither  of  these  officers  approved 

treaty. 

it,  and  each  was  confident  that  Bradstreet  had  been 
too  precipitate  in  coming  to  even  a  promise  of  peace  till 
the  Indians  had  felt  the  blow  which  it  was  the  purpose  of  Gage 
to  give  them.  It  was  September  2  when  Gage  received  the 
news,  and  he  immediately  sent  orders  to  Bradstreet  to  quit 
parleying  with  the  Delawares,  for  they  were  still  ravaging  the 
frontiers.  Meanwhile,  Bouquet,  who  had  also  heard  of  the 
treaty,  hoped  the  tidings  would  not  be  confirmed,  and  was 
pushing  on  into  the  wilderness  in  disregard  of  it,  but  quite 
ready  to  find  occasion  to  punish  the  tribes  for  any  breach  of  its 
provisions  on  their  part.  He  thought  the  fact  that  the  Senecas 
had  submitted  was  more  likely  to  awe  the  Delawares  than  this 
trumped-up  treaty  was  to  mollify  them. 

Bouquet  was  not  a  man  of  dallying  compunctions.  He  had 
Bouquet  and  u^gcd  the  Penusylvauians  to  employ  dogs  to  track  the 
his  advance,  gavagcs,  if  the  provincc  would  not  help  him  with  men. 
He  had  given  out  that  with  three  or  four  hundred  good  woods- 
men, he  could  burn  every  Indian  village  in  the  Ohio  country. 
No  matter  what  spirit  he  showed,  the  neighboring  governments 
were  slow  in  coming^  to  his  aid.  He  had  found  himself  held 
back  by  this  apathy,  with  the  mountains  still  before  him,  when 
he  supposed  Bradstreet  was  punishing  the  Wyandots  and  Dela- 
wares in  the  region  of  Sandusky. 

It  was  not  till  the  1st  of  October  that  Bouquet  crossed  the 


BOUQUET. 


443 


Ohio,  with  a  definite  purpose  of  forcing  a  peace  of  his  own  im- 
posing which  should  relieve  the  regions  east  and  south  of  the 
Ohio  of  the  tribes,  and  preserve  the  navigation  of  the  Ohio 
itself.     He  had  advanced  into  tho  "Mnslvin2,'uni  vrillcv,  when,  on 


HENRY   BOUQUET. 

the  17th  of  November,  the  Indians  hovering  about  thought  it 
wise  to  sue  for  peace.  Bouquet  would  make  no  terms  until 
every  prisoner  among  them  was  surrendered.  It  took  nearly  a 
month  to  gather  in  these  unfortunates.  One  among  the  forest 
exiles  had  given  birth  the  previous  spring  to  offspring  supposed 
to  be  the  first  white  child  born  in  what  is  now  the  State  of  Ohio. 


444  THE  EFFECT   UPON   THE  INDIANS. 

Having  imposed  his  terms,  Bouquet  broke  up  his  camp  on  the 

18th,  and  ten  days  later  was  at  Fort  Pitt.     Not  long 

vfew  Xthe     afterwards,  Sir  William  Johnson  congratulated    him 

campaign.       ^^  j^.^  succcss.     "  Nothing  but  penetrating  into  their 

country  coidd  have  done  it,"  said  the  Indian  agent. 

There  was  some  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  Shawnees, 
backed  by  French  influence  and  strengthened  by  French  sup- 
plies, to  hold  out ;  but  the  pressure  of  the  Iroquois  finally 
brought  them  to  terms.  During  December,  Bouquet  sent  off 
messengers  from  Fort  Loudon  to  inform  the  governors  of  the 
nearer  provinces  of  the  peace.  Gage  promptly  approved  the 
treaty,  and  advised  Bouquet  to  do  what  he  could  to  appease 
Pontiac.  There  was  not  a  force  available  to  make  a  successful 
march  to  the  Illinois,  and  Gage  had  been  for  some  time  suspi- 
cious of  St.  Ange's  influence  in  that  region.  He  accordingly 
directed  Bouquet  to  get  a  Shawnee  escort  for  a  messenger  to 
the  Illinois,  in  anticipation  of  detaching  a  sufficient  force  later, 
to  occupy  the  posts  still  in  the  hands  of  the  French.  The  out- 
come of  this  intention  will  appear  in  the  final  chapter. 

The  results  of  Bouquet's  treaty  were  for  the  next  ten  years 
far  from  satisfactory,  but  it  does  not  concern  us  here 
Bouquet's      to  cutcr  upou  the  details  of  the  irrepressible  irritation 
treaty.  ^^  hoth.  red  man  and  white.     It  led  to  the  treaty  at 

Fort  Stanwix,  and  the  practical  annulment  of  the  king's  procla- 
mation, before  the  strife  of  the  colonies  with  the  mother  coun- 
try broke  up  all  restraints.  One  result  of  the  Bouquet  treaty 
was  to  draw  the  savages  still  more  from  the  occupancy  of  the 
regions  south  of  the  Ohio,  and  facilitate  the  settling  a  few  years 
later  of  what  are  now  the  States  of  Kentucky  and  Tennessee. 
Very  soon  after  Bouquet's  conference,  the  last  of  the  Shawnees 
who  lingered  in  that  country  crossed  the  Ohio.  Another  result 
was  the  sending  of  Croghan  to  England,  at  the  instance  of  Sir 
William  Johnson,  to  advise  with  the  government.  Croghan 
recommended  that  a  line  be  drawn  from  the  head  of  the  Dela- 
ware to  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio,  so  as  to  reserve  for  an  Indian 
hunting-ground  all  to  the  north  and  west,  while  a  fair  purchase 
was  made  of  all  territory  between  such  a  line  and  the  settle- 
ments. The  recommendation  resulted  in  a  plan  devised  at  Fort 
Stanwix  four  years  later.     By  that  time,  Pontiac  and  the  west- 


THE    WESTWARD  MOVEMENT.  445 

ern  chiefs  had  presented  themselves  at  Oswego,  where  Johnson 
had  concluded  a  treaty  with  them. 

This  harmonized  interests  pretty  well  at  the  north  ;  but  the 
troubles  in  Virginia  kept  on,  and  were  only  turned  to  new  chan- 
nels by  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution.  The  exhaustion  of  the 
tidewater  soils,  incident  upon  the  culture  of  tobacco,  had  always 
incited  a  movement  westward  to  find  new  ground,  and  this  played 
not  an  unimportant  part  in  the  earlier  advance  to  and  jj,g  veestern 
beyond  the  mountains  at  the  south,  compared  with  the  nortHnd* 
movement  at  the  north.  This  southern  exodus  was  *°""'" 
painfully  restrained  at  times  by  the  barbarous  inroads  along  the 
frontiers,  and  we  have  the  testimony  of  Maury,  the  Huguenot, 
that  this  unsettled  condition  of  life  was  starting  emi-  Virginians 
gration  from  Virginia  into  the  more  southern  colonies,  ™°^^  ^°""'' 
where  a  quieter  existence  seemed  to  be  assured  by  the  inter- 
posed barrier  formed  by  the  Cherokees  and  Catawbas.  Maury 
tells  us  that  three  hundred  persons  passed  in  one  week  by  Bed- 
ford Court  House  into  Carolina,  and  in  October,  1764,  he  says 
that  five  thousand  crossed  by  the  Goochland  Court  House  on 
the  same  errand. 

But  the  movement  was  by  no  means  confined  to  a  southerly 
direction.  The  trader  had  long  since  become  familiar  with  the 
mountain  passes,  and  the  pioneer  was  sure  to  succeed  to  the 
trader's  routes.  The  Moravians  were  opening  the  way. 
Already,  in  1761,  the  missionary,  Post,  had  penetrated  ansinthe" 
to  an  upper  branch  of  the  Muskingum,  and  built  him 
a  cabin  there  on  the  north  side  of  the  Tuscarawas  Creek,  — 
in  what  is  now  Stark  County.  It  was  probably  the  first  white 
man's  house  in  the  wilds  of  Ohio. 

The  British  Parliament  soon  after,  in  1763,  passed  a  law  for 
the  naturalization  of  Protestant  foreigners  who  had  served  in 
the  royal  army  in  America,  and  had  bought  land  and   ^^^^^^  ^^j^. 
settled.     This  gave  a  new  strength  to  the  alien  popula-  '■^^^^e'^- 
tion,  and  it  proved  impossible  to  restrain  them  within  the  limits 
imposed   by  the  proclamation  of  1763.     The   routes 
which  had  been  opened  over  the  mountains  by  Forbes  yond  the 
and  Braddock  were  dotted  with  the  moving  wagons. 
It  has  been  estimated  that  from  1765  to  1768  some  thirty  thou- 
sand whites  settled  beyond  the  mountains. 


446  THE  EFFECT   UPON  THE  INDIANS. 

This  had  not  been  done  without  spasmodic  efforts  on  the  part 
o£  the  king's  officers  to  stop  it.  Repeated  instructions  were 
sent  to  the  colonial  governors  to  interpose  restraints.  Threats 
had  been  made  to  leave  all  adventurous  and  law-breaking  set- 
tlers to  the  mercy  of  the  Indians,  if  they  persisted  in  entering 
the  crown  lands.  Nothing  of  threat  or  prohibition  had  much 
effect.  Soldiers  were  sent  to  eject  such  settlers  on  Red  Stone 
Creek  and  the  Cheat  River,  but  the  dispossessed  squatters  soon 
returned  to  their  old  haunts  in  larger  numbers,  recruited  among 
•their  friends.  Even  Washington  sent  out  his  agents  and  sur- 
veyors through  the  Ohio  region,  who  picked  out  desirable  tracts, 
and  blazed  their  bounds.  It  was  his  intention  to  patent  them, 
as  soon  as  the  restrictions  of  the  proclamation  became,  as  every 
one  foresaw  they  must  become,  a  fruitless  provision. 

The  story  of  this  occupation,  and  the  movements  in  which 
Franklin  took  a  leading  part  to  bring  these  Ohio  regions  within 
the  range  of  civilized  prosperity,  with  a  promise  finally  realized 
by  a  free  people,  belongs  rather  to  another  volume  than  the  pres- 
ent. It  only  remains  now  to  show  how  the  western  posts  came 
finally  into  the  victor's  hands. 


CHAPTEK   XXIII. 

OCCUPATION    COMPLETED. 

1764,  1765. 

While  New  Orleans  and  Louisiana  were  still  lingering  de- 
ceitfully under  the  flag  of  France,  the  doom  of  the  xhe  Jesuits 
Jesuits  had  been  decreed  in  Paris.  This  religious  '^°^^^^- 
order  had  with  a  remarkable  prescience  marked  out  both  in  the 
upper  and  the  lower  basins  of  the  Mississippi  what  those 
regions  could  do  for  mankind.  They  had  introduced  the  sugar 
cane  at  the  south  and  planted  wheat  in  the  Illinois  country. 
The  Superior  Council  of  the  province  had  already  much  re- 
stricted their  powers,  when  a  general  decree  in  Paris  jjut  an  end 
to  their  work  everywhere  in  the  French  dominions.  It  meant 
that  the  marvelous  power  of  the  Jesuit  in  regidating  intercourse 
with  the  savage  along  the  Great  River  must  come,  for  the 
present  at  least,  to  an  end.  The  settlements  at  Kaskaskia  and 
in  the  upper  country  had  been  what  the  Jesuits  had  made 
them. 

The  treaty  of  1763  had  drawn  a  sharp  and  natural  line  of 
demarcation  between  the    English  and   the    French,  The  treaty 
along  the  channel  of  the  Mississippi.     This  meant  a  tteselt*-*^ 
distinct  abandonment  upon  the   part  of  the   British  ^^a  claim. 
government  of  the  old  sea-to-sea  claim  of   the  early  English 
charters.     The  idea  of  such  abandonment  was  not  a  grateful 
one  to  many  of  the  English  patentees.     They  held  that  by  the 
treaty  the  claim  suffered  only  a  suspension,  and  not  a  dissolu- 
tion.    A  variety  of  j^amphlets  was  sprung  upon  the  public  to 
enforce  this  view.     They  made  the  most  they  could  of  what 
they  alleged  was  the  avoidance  by  England  in  the  treaty  to 
guarantee  to    France  the    possession  of    the    trans-Mississippi 
country.      To  strengthen   the   territorial   pretension   of   these 


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Note.     A  part  of  Jefferys'  map,  1768,   allowing  the  vicinity  of  New  Orleans  and  the  Gulf 
coast.     The  section  on  the  opposite  page  attaches  to  this  part  on  the  left  hand. 


i/i^ZlUle^  (^idf 


[From  The  Course  of  the  Mississippi,  hy  Lieutenant  Ross,  improved  from  the  Surveys  of  the 
French,  London,  1775.     It  shows  the  point  where  Loftus  was  driven  back.] 


[From  CaUot's  ^/^a*,  PI.  34.] 


452  OCCUPATION  COMPLETED. 

pamphleteers,  it  was  necessary  to  depend  upon  English  explora- 
tions as  well  as  upon  the  right  to  issue  the  sea-to-sea  charters. 
Story  after  story  of  early  wanderings  of  the  English  along  and 
beyond  the  Mississippi  were  rehabilitated  in  the  public  mind. 
Such  were  the  unsupported  narrative  of  the  adventures  of 
Colonel  Wood  in  1654  and  1664.  The  discredited  journals 
and  maps  given  by  the  younger  Coxe,  which  carried  in  1676 
the  roving  explorers  sent  out  by  the  father  up  the  Mississippi 
to  the  Missouri,  were  once  more  cited.  The  fabulous  party  of 
New  Englanders  who  went  overland  to  New  Mexico  in  1678, 
and  whose  guides  were  represented  as  afterward  leading  La 
Salle  down  the  Great  River,  was  again  created  as  a  veritable 
record. 

But  the  ambitious  and  seductive  pretense  availed  nothing, 
and  the  bounds  of  Carolana,  like  those  of  Virginia  and  the  other 
colonies  having  a  western  extension,  were  clipped  at  the  Mis- 
sissippi forever.  England  thus  not  only  abrogated  her  sea-to- 
sea  claims,  but  the  short-sightedness  which  made  crown  lands 
of  her  acquisitions  beyond  the  Alleghanies  laid  open  the  way 
for  the  new  Republic  in  1782,  by  virtue  of  having  wrested 
them  from  the  crown  itself,  to  include  them  in  its  nascent 
realm. 

It  was  in  1764  that  efforts  were  first  made  by  the  English  to 
Carolinians  ^^^  posscssiou  of  the  left  bank  of  the  Mississippi. 
Rouge?"  ^^  *^^*  year,  some  wanderers  from  Roanoke  in  North 
^'^^-  Carolina  came  to  Baton  Rouge  and  entered  upon  a 

contraband  trade  with  the  French.  In  the  previous  February, 
The  English  Major  Arthur  Loftus,  with  about  four  hundred  Eng- 
onthe^*'^'^  lish  troops,  which  had  come  from  Mobile,  already 
Mississippi.  ^;aken  possession  of,  entered  the  Mississippi,  with  the 
purpose  of  proceeding  to  the  upper  waters  and  receiving  the 
surrender  of  Fort  Chartres  and  the  other  French  posts.  On 
February  27,  the  detachment  of  Loftus  left  New  Orleans  in  the 
ascent.  Some  weeks  later,  on  May  20,  the  flotilla,  which  was 
making  a  laborious  progress,  was  suddenly  attacked  at  Davion's 
Bluff  (Fort  Adams).  The  English,  surprised,  were  driven 
back  with  a  small  loss.  There  is  some  reason  to  believe  that 
this  attack,  made  by  the  Indians,  had  been  encouraged  by 
French  residents,  though  the  French  officers  in  authority  are 


o 

r-,      W 


454  OCCUPATION  COMPLETED. 

probably  to  be  exonerated.     Loftiis,  however,  and  his  officers 

remained  convinced  of  such  connivance.      The  spot  where  it 

occurred  was  two  hundred  and  forty  miles  from  New  Orleans, 

as  is  indicated  in  a  map  of  the  Mississippi  made  in  a  later  ascent 

by  Lieutenant  Ross  of  the  thirty-fourth  regiment,  in  which  is 

marked   the  place    "  where   the   Twenty-second    regiment  was 

driven  back  by  the  Tonicas."    Andrew  Ellicott  also  marks  it  in 

a  map  which  accompanies  his  more  recent  journal. 

A  few  weeks  later,  Neyon  de  Villiers,  who  commanded  at 

Fort  Chartres,  summoning  St.  Anee  from  the  Wa- 
st. Ange  .  °  * 

at  Fort         bash,  left  that  officer  in  charge,  and  started  down  the 

Chartres.  ......  „„  ° 

Mississippi  with  six  officers,  over  sixty  soldiers,  and 
about  eighty  French  residents  in  his  train.  He  reached  New 
Orleans  on  July  2,  finding  the  French  still  in  control,  and  with 
no  suspicion  of  the  sudden  shock  which  they  were  to  experience 
three  months  later  (October,  1764),  when  the  provisions  of  the 
secret  Fontainebleau  treaty  became  known.  A  letter  from  the 
The  secret  Frcuch  king,  dated  in  April,  had  revealed  their  des- 
vulge^dHy  ^^^J-  D'Abadic,  now  in  the  governorship  in  suc- 
octote*^^'  cession  to  Kerlerec,  had  been  in  office  since  June, 
1764.  1763.     He  was  a  man  who  soon  commanded  respect 

by  his  uprightness,  but  the  execrable  condition  of  the  finances 
of  the  province  had  proved  too  much  for  even  an  able  adminis- 
trator, and  he  was  beginning  to  lose  ground  in  health  and  spirits 
under  the  pressure  of  his  duties.  Champigny  tells  us  how  dis- 
heartening and  even  appalling  an  effect  the  news  which  D'Aba- 
die  was  compelled  to  disclose  had  made  upon  a  community  who 
could  but  feel  that  they  had  been  betrayed  in  exigencies  which 
little  concerned  them.  D'Abadie  suffered  mortification  and  a 
revulsion  of  feelings  with  the  rest,  and  did  not  live  to  turn  the 
province  over  to  the  Spanish  governor,  whom  he  was  instructed 

to  receive.  He  died,  weighed  down  and  disconsolate, 
dies;Vuoa  ou  February  4,  1765;  and  it  was  not  tiU  March, 
comes.  1760^  that  Ulloa,  the  Spanish  representative,  arrived 

in  the  river,  to  treat  with  Aubry,  the  successor  of  D'Abadie, 
for  the  surrender  of  the  province.  This  change  of  destiny, 
which  fell  with  so  distressing  a  blow  upon  D'Abadie  and  the 
faithful  Louisianians,  came  also  like  a  blight  to  a  people  who 
had  shown  in  many  ways  their  devotion  to  the  Bourbon  crown 
of  France. 


ENGLISH  AND  FRENCH   TRADERS.  455 

Early  in  17G5,  some  of  the  restless  and  wandering  Acadians, 
now  for  ten  years  unwelcome  and  unwilling  denizens  Acadians  in 
along  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  had  begun  to  arrive  in  Lo'»siana. 
New  Orleans.  These  and  later  comers  in  part  took  up  their 
home  lots  along  the  reaches  of  the  river  still  known  as  the 
"  Cajean  Coast."  They  had  left  the  English  colonies  with  the 
hope  of  living  once  more  under  the  French  flag ;  but  found 
they  had  come  to  a  distracted  land.  Others,  already  planning 
for  the  change,  were  stopped  by  hearing  of  the  new  conditions, 
and,  turning  to  seek  other  asylums,  found  their  way  to  San 
Domingo,  Cayenne,  and  even  to  France  and  Corsica.  Some  of 
these  same  exiles,  who  had  started  west  to  descend  the  Missis- 
sippi, met  the  disastrous  news  at  Detroit,  and  tarried  there, 
where  they  are  still  represented  by  descendants. 

Since  the  promulgation  of  the  proclamation  of  1763,  there 
had  been  an  increasing  disaffection  among  the  Eng-  English 
lish  traders  in  finding  themselves  debarred  from  traffic  the'^tiew^"*^ 
beyond  the  Mississippi.    In  what  were  now  the  crown  conditions. 
lands,  wars  and  removals  had  sensibly  thinned  the  native  popu- 
lation, and  it  had  become  evident  that  the  future  of  the  Indian 
trade  must  be  west  of  the  Great  River.     The  tidings  of  the 
Spanish  accession  to  this  distant  territory,  in  that  it  opened 
new  channels  for  English  enterprise,  and  was  not  likely  to  cul- 
tivate the  same  degree  of  rivalry  as  with  the  French,  came  with 
new  encouragements  to  the  trader.     We  find  this  expressed  in 
a  letter  of  February  26,  1765,  from  Governor  Dobbs  of  North 
Carolina,  one  of  the  last  he  wrote,  for  he  expired  about  a  month 
later  (March  28).     The   English  can  now  extend,  he   says  in 
effect,  their  trade  beyond  the  Mississippi,  and  reach  the  Span- 
iards of  new  and  old  Mexico,  "  by  pushing  on  our  discoverers 
and  traders  by  the  Missouri  and  the  rivers  west  of  the  Missis- 
sippi," and   so   secure  "'  an  open  trade  to  the  westward  Ameri- 
can ocean."     The  gain,  however,  was  not  to  be  all  on  French 
one  side,  for  both  Spanish  and  French  traders  were  ortiirMfs^* 
pushing  east  of  the  Mississippi,  and  were  carrying  off  ®'»^'pp'- 
furs  from  points  within  sixty  miles   of  Detroit,  and  Kaskaskia 
was  filled  with  goods  from  New  Orleans. 

It  was  evident  that  the   English,  if  they  would   retain  the 
Indian  trade,  could  not  long  delay  possession  of  this  Illinois 


456  OCCUPATION  COMPLETED. 

and  Wabash  country.    The  approach  was  now  to  be  made  over- 
land from  the  east.     We  have  seen  that  Gage,  at  the 
sent  over-      end  of  Bouquet's  campaign,  had  instructed  that  offi- 
cer to  send  messengers  to  the  Illinois.     Early  in  1765, 
Lieutenant  Fraser  had  been  dispatched  from  Fort  Pitt  to  pre- 
pare the  tribes  and  the  French  for  the  English  force  which  was 
to  follow.    He  reached  the  Illinois  villages,  where  the 
Fraser  sent    French  traders  conspired  to  take  his  life.     He  owed 
his  deliverance  to  Pontiac,  now  disposed  to  make  his 
peace  with  the  inevitable  masters.     Fleeing  finally  in  disguise, 
Fraser   left   the  field    open    by  descending    in    June   to    New 
Orleans. 

The  mission  was  soon  to  be  pursued  by  a  different  man,  for 
the  lot  had  fallen  to  George  Croghan,  the  best  choice 
ghan  sent  possiblc,  and  f avorcd  by  Bouquet,  though  he  was  not  in 
all  ways  above  suspicion  when  the  Indian  trade  was  in 
question.  Under  instructions  from  Sir  William  Johnson,  Cro- 
ghan left  Fort  Pitt  about  the  middle  of  May,  1765.  He  had 
two  boats,  with  several  white  companions.  A  small  party  of 
Delawares,  Shawnees,  and  Iroquois  soon  joined  him.  He  went 
prepared  to  note  the  country  and  plot  the  windings  of  the  Ohio. 
The  early  geographers  of  this  valley  owed  something  to  him, 
though  his  scale  of  distances  proved  subject  to  considerable 
errors.  Fortunately,  his  journal  has  been  preserved,  and  we 
can  see  in  his  narrative  how  the  river  banks  were  at  this  time 
alive  with  the  buffalo  and  other  wild  game. 

Croghan  had  sent  out  messengers  to  summon  the  French 
traders  to  meet  him  at  the  mouth  of  the  Scioto  and  take  the 
oath  of  allegiance,  and  the  Indians  helped  to  bring  them  in. 
By  the  6th  of  June,  he  was  at  the  mouth  of  the  Wabash,  where 
he  found  the  Indians  less  tractable  than  the  Shawnees  had 
been  higher  up  the  valley.  He  now  dispatched  messengers  to 
St.  Ange  to  warn  him  of  his  approach ;  but  his  advance  was 
brought  suddenly  to  a  stop.  On  the  morning  of  June 
poos  attack.  8,  a  body  of  Kickapoos  and  Mascoutins,  on  the  pre- 
tense that  his  Indians  were  Cherokees,  attacked  and 
captured  him.  The  savages  carried  their  prisoner  to  Vincennes, 
and  arrived  there  on  the  15th.  Croghan  reports  this  town  to  have 
at  the  time  some  eighty  French  habitations  (occupied,  to  his  eyes. 


FORT  CHARTRES   OCCUPIED.  457 

by  an  idle  and  lazy  population),  with  Indian  huts  scattered  among 
them.  Croghan  himself  was  treated  with  respect,  and  was  sent 
up  the  river  to  Ouiatanon,  where  he  was  released.  Here  he 
received  a  letter  from  St.  Ange,  promising  a  courteous 

TT  T»  •  1        J  Treaty  at 

reception,     rle  now  met  i:^ontiac,  and  at  a  concourse  the  Maumee 
of  the  neighboring  tribes  held  at  Ouiatanon,  Croghan 
speedily  brought  them  to  terms.       The  Twightwees  gave  up 
their  English  prisoners,  and  hoisted  the  English  flag  upon  the 
banks  of  the  St.  Joseph,  a  branch  of  the  Maumee.     That  the 
Indians  of  the  upper  Ohio  valley  had  already  succumbed  seemed 
to  help  Croghan  with  the  more  distant  tribes,  and  Pontiac's  good 
offices   became  important.      Croghan,   in    the   report 
which  he  made  to  Johnson,  spoke  of  the  Ottawa  chief 
as  "  a  shrewd,  sensible  Indian  of  few  words,   who  commands 
more  respect  among  his  own  nation  than  any  Indian  I  ever 
saw."     Croghan  adds  that  Pontiac   seemed  to  understand  the 
late  contest  as  a  "  beaver  war,"  stirred  up  for  profit.    The  chief 
spoke  for  peace,  but  he  demanded  jjowder  and  lead  for  his  peo- 
ple, and  begged  that  they  might  be  dismissed  with  a  plenty  of 
rum !     It  was  further  the  opinion  of  Croghan  that  the  French 
hold  upon  the  Indians  was  still   strong,  and  that  the  English 
must  not  expect  a  speedy  revulsion  in  their  favor. 

Croghan  made  concessions  enough  to  accomplish  his  purpose, 
and  early  in  August  started  down  the  Mamnee  in  the  croghanin 
confident  expectation  that  the  march  of  the  English,  ^^'^''oit. 
later  on,  to  Fort  Chartres  would  be  permitted  without  restraint. 
On  the  17th,  he  was  at  Detroit,  and  repeated  his  success  with 
the  new  savage  hordes  which  greeted  him  there,  and  then,  secur- 
ing Pontiac's  promise  to  seal  the  peace  with  Johnson  at  Oswego, 
he  started  for  Niagara. 

Croghan's  report  being  made.  Captain  Thomas  Stirling  started 
from  Fort  Pitt  with  a  hundred  and  twenty  Highland- 
ers, and,  meeting  with  no  obstructions,  the  expedition   marches 
reached  Fort  Chartres,  and  on  October  10,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Stirling  and  his  Black  Watch  regiment,  the  French  flag 
was  hauled  down,  and  St.  Ange  gave  up  his  authority. 
There  was  not  now  a  Bourbon  symbol  flying  anywhere   chartres 
throughout   the    English    conquest.     The    threats    of   October  io, 
resistance  wliich   early   in   the   spring   the   adjacent 


'-W^i 


FORT  CHARTRES   AND   KASKASKIA. 


[From  Lieutenant  Ross's  Course  of  the  Mississippi,  improved  from  Surveys  of  the  French, 
London,  1775.] 


462  OCCUPATION  COMPLETED. 

tribes  were   making  had  been  succeeded  by  the   same   quiet 
submission  wliicli  Croghan  had  compelled  on  the  Maumee. 
Gage  had  prepared  a  proclamation,  which  was  now  issued  by 
the  English  commander.     It  assured  the  French  of 
lish  proc-       security  in  their  religion,  and  gave  them  opportunity 
to  retire  with  their  property  to  New  Orleans,  or  else- 
where if  they  desired.     If  they  remained,  they  were  promised 
the  same  protection  that  was    accorded    to    British   subjects. 
There  were  some  thousand  French  whom  these  provisions  af- 
fected.    A  considerable  proportion  followed  St.  Ange  across 
the  Mississippi,  when  he  moved  his  headquarters  to  St.  Louis. 
A  few  British  families  succeeded  to  some  of  the  farms  that  had 
been  thus  abandoned.     Two  years  later,  it  was  estimated  that 
half  the  French  settlers  had  crossed  the  river,  and  that 
depart  or       there  wcre  something  over  two  thousand  left  on  Eng- 
lish soil,  of  whom  three  fourths  were  along  the  Mis- 
sissippi, and  a  quarter  remained  on  the  Wabash.    It  is  supposed 
that  at  this  time  hardly  haK  as  many  French  occupied  these  new 
settlements,  and  they  were  mostly  within  the  limits  of  the  mod- 
ern State  of  Missouri. 

Stirling  having  thus  secured  quiet  possession,  his  force  was 
after  a  while,  in  December,  1765,  strengthened  by  the  arrival  of 
British  *^^^  thirty-fourth  regiment  under  Major  Farmer,  com- 

ceud'thr  i"^  ^P  *1^®  river  from  the  Gulf.  There  had  been  some 
Mississippi,  apprehension  that  these  troops  might  suffer  like  those 
under  Loftus ;  but  precautions  had  been  taken.  Stuart,  the  In- 
dian agent  in  the  south,  had  propitiated  the  Chickasaws  by  gifts, 
and  parties  of  that  tribe  not  only  scoured  the  country  along  the 
river  on  the  flanks  of  the  flotilla  which  carried  the  troops,  but 
a  body  of  their  hunters  kept  the  little  army  supplied  with  game. 
There  had  been  some  fear  that  perhaps  the  minor  tribes  along 
the  river  would  yield  to  French  intrigue,  and  harass  the  British, 
but  the  Choctaws  restrained  them.  The  Arkansas  on  the  west- 
ern bank  proved  also  friendly,  and  Stuart  indulged  a  hope  that 
their  peaceable  disposition  might  yet  conduce  to  their  crossing 
the  river.  With  them,  the  Natchez,  and  the  Alibamons,  the 
English  miglit  command  some  six  hundred  warriors  to  protect 
the  free  navigation  of  the  Mississippi.  While  these  precautions 
had  made  the  movements  of  the  troops  safe  in  the  lower  valley. 


2    W 
B    o 


^  o 

2     H 


464  OCCUPATION  COMPLETED. 

a  body  of  Cherokees  had  been  sent  to  the  Illinois  country,  where 
their  motions  proved  a  distraction  to  the  French  and  Indians. 
With  these  plans  for  protecting  its  flanks,  the  English  regiment 
at  last,  after  a  toilsome  passage  of  five  months  and  more,  entered 
quietly  within  the  defenses  at  Fort  Chartres,  and  the  English 
possession  of  the  country  was  completed. 


INDEX. 


Aberckombie,  sent  to  America,  385 ; 
to  attack  Tieonderoga,  38G ;  his  de- 
feat, 386. 

Acadia,  French  claims  to,  160,  161  ; 
charter,  317 ;  acquired  by  England, 
87,  420. 

Acadians,  274 ;  in  Louisiana,  274  ;  per- 
fidy of,  353  ;  New  England  to  occupy 
their  attention,  356  ;  a  party  of  them 
captured,  377 ;  in  Louisiana,  455 ;  in 
Detroit,  455. 

Acansia  River,  75.  See  Aacantia ;  Iber- 
ville River. 

Adair,  James,  American  Indians,  248, 
262 ;  his  map,  262,  263 ;  among  the 
Chickasaws,  266. 

Adams,  John,  on  the  French,  335 ;  on 
Loudoun,  384. 

Adams,  Samuel,  219. 

Adayes,  94,  95,  154,  155. 

Aguilar,  216. 

Aix-la-Chapelle,  treaty,  224,  3-34. 

Akansea  River,  61.     See  Arkansas. 

Akanseas,  61. 

Alabama  River,  21,  41 ;  post  on,  86, 
421. 

Albany,  traders  of,  67,  68,  74,  88,  125, 
126,  164,  165,  346;  treaty  at,  165; 
clandestine  trade  with  Quebec,  250 ; 
conference  (1751),  287 ;  congress 
(1754),  343  ;  plan  of  congress  rejected, 
350. 

Albemarle,  Lord,  ambassador  to  Paris, 
335. 

Alibamons,  21, 64,  65, 153,  268  ;  friendly 
to  the  English,  462. 

AUard,  74. 

Alleghany  River,  the  route  to  the  Ohio 
country,  14,  17,  30,  279 ;  mapped, 
345  ;  abandoned  by  the  French,  398. 

AUouez,  26. 

Altamaha  River,  135,  170. 

American  Antiquarian  Society,  254. 

Amherst,  General  Jeffery,  attacks  Cape 
Breton,  386 ;  leads  the  new  campaign, 
395  ;  at  Lake  George,  395  ;  at  Crown 
Point,  396 ;  sends  a  messenger  to 
Wolfe,  396  ;  expected  at  Quebec,  399  ; 
his  advance  on  Montreal,  403 ;  his 
force,    404 ;    announces  peace,    419 ; 


and  the  Pontiac  war,  438  ;  returns  to 
England,  441. 

Andrews,'  New  Map  (1783),  247. 

Anian,  Straits  of,  77,  214,  426. 

Anne,  Queen,  succeeds,  68. 

Appalachians,  as  a  barrier,  12, 122, 131 ; 
gaps,  17  ;  maps,  19 ;  as  a  boundary, 
76,  143  ;  mines,  134  ;  English  lack  of 
knowledge  of,  161 ;  Byrd's  view  of, 
168. 

Appalachicola  River,  21,  143. 

Arkansas  Indians,  peaceful,  462. 

Arkansas  River,  90,  98, 105, 156  ;  Law's 
grant,  104 ;  post  at  its  mouth,  156. 
See  Akansea  River. 

Armstrong,  Colonel  John,  attacks  Kit- 
tanning,  377. 

Armstrong,  Major,  pioneer  for  Forbes, 
388. 

Artaguette,  Diron  d',  65,  85 ;  leaves 
Louisiana,  83  ;  beaten  by  the  Chicka- 
saws, 191. 

Ascantia  River,  40,  42,  49.    See  Acansia. 

Ascension  Bay,  448. 

Ashby's  Gap,  233. 

Aspinwali  papers,  299. 

Assiniboine  Indians,  30;  (Assiniboils), 
97  ;  (Asinipoils),  147  ;  mission,  194  ; 
various  forms  of  the  name,  194 ;  and 
the  western  way,  199,  203  ;  the  tribe, 
205  ;  their  treachery,  206  ;  their  coim- 
try,  215. 

Assiniboine  River,  mapped,  195,  205. 

Atchison,  144. 

Adas  Moderne,  216. 

Atlas  Nouveau,  216. 

Aubry  leaves  Duquesne,  392 ;  defeated 
by  Johnson,  398. 

Aubry,  governor  of  Louisiana,  454. 

Aughwick,  342,  ,345. 

Augusta  (Va.),  178. 

AzUia,  135. 

Balize,  fort  at,  154. 

Bancroft,  H.    H.,   and    Moncacht-Apd, 

214. 
Baton  Rouge,  7,  40  ;  English  at  (1764), 

452. 
Bayagoulas,  37,  38,  40,  44,  49,  448. 


466 


INDEX. 


Baye  de  St.  Bernard,  92 ;  abandoned, 
94. 

Baye  de  St.  Esprit,  92, 

Baye  de  St.  Louis,  92,  142,  .321. 

Beauharnois,  puts  vessels  on  Lake  Onta- 
rio, 165  ;  and  western  discovery,  193, 
198 ;  and  V^rendrye,  201  ;  preparing 
for  war,  220  ;  Indian  conference,  250. 

Beaujeu  at  Duquesne,  301 ;  killed,  362. 

Beaurain,  Chevalier  de,  52. 

Beaver,  extermination  of,  329. 

Beaver  Creek,  299,  301,  436. 

Beaver's  Town,  261. 

Bedford,  Duke  of,  420. 

Begon,  Memoire,  30 ;  the  intendant  of 
Canada,  112,  165. 

Belcher,  Governor  of  Massachusetts, 
174. 

Bellestre  at  Detroit,  406. 

BeUin,  and  the  western  water-way,  106  ; 
his  hydrographical  theories,  204,  214  ; 
his  maps,  246,  249  ;  his  map  used  by 
Washington,  306;  and  the  French 
claim,  330. 

Bellomont,  Governor,  14,  66,  68. 

Bering's  Straits,  212. 

Berkeley,  Bishop,  162. 

Berthelot  in  the  Illinois,  260,  262. 

Bethlehem  (Pa.)  258. 

Beverly,  Robert,  129. 

Beverly,  WUliam,  170. 

Beverly  manor,  179,  229,  237. 

Bienville,  his  parentage,  2  ;  on  the  Mis- 
sissippi, 38  ;  his  character,  42  ;  com- 
missioned, 48 ;  at  Fort  Laboulaye, 
52  ;  portrait,  57  ;  at  BUoxi,  62  ;  at- 
tacks the  Alibamons,  64  ;  his  enemies, 
65 ;  quarrels  with  Cadillac,  101 ;  at- 
tacks the  Natchez,  101  ;  builds  Fort 
Rosalie,  101  ;  governor  of  the  Com- 
pany of  the  West,  102 ;  receives  his 
commission,  104  ;  attacks  Pensacola, 
106 ;  New  Orleans  his  capital,  154 ; 
protests  against  Spanish  encroach- 
ments, 154  ;  attacks  the  Natchez,  157  ; 
returns  to  France,  157 ;  reinstated  in 
Louisiana,  190 ;  campaigns  against 
the  Chiekasaws,  191  ;  sends  a  party 
up  the  Arkansas,  200  ;  retires,  259. 

Big  Horn  range,  202. 

Big  Miami  River,  30.     See  Miami. 

Big  Roebuck,  211. 

Big  Sandy  River,  2.30. 

Big  Tree,  Oneida  chief,  284. 

Bigot  and  St.  Pierre,  204 ;  intendant  at 
Quebec,  228  ;   urging  war,  294. 

Biloxi,  62  ;  Indians,  37  ;  settlement,  42  ; 
life   at,  43 ;  position,  59,  75,  423,  448. 

Bisque,  F.  del,  10. 

Black  Watch  Regiment,  457. 

Blair,  governor  of  Virginia,  229. 

Blue  Ridge,  129. 

Bob^,  and  the  Lahontan  story,  80 ;  and 


Deltsle,  111;  on  a  western  way,  114; 
Memoire,  160  ;  views  as  to  the  French 
claims,  161. 

Boisbriant,  P.  D.,  62  ;  commands  in  Illi- 
nois, 120  ;  fears  the  English  advance, 
149 ;  at  New  Orleans,  157. 

BoUan,  on  the  English  claim,  331. 

Bolt,  Captain,  in  the  Ohio  country,  421. 

Bonneearaps,  his  map,  255-257. 

Boone,  Daniel,  crosses  the  mountains, 
410. 

Borden,  Benjamin,  179. 

Borden  grant,  229. 

Boseawen,  Admiral,  368. 

Boston,  threatened  by  the  French,  68, 
222  ;  its  condition,  218. 

Boston  News-Letter,  69. 

Bougainville  at  Quebec,  378 ;  returns 
from  France,  395  ;  at  Quebec,  399 ;  on 
Lake  Champlain,  404. 

Bourbonia,  111. 

Bourgmont  (Bourmont,  Boismont,  Bour- 
nion),  112;  on  the  Missouri,  141; 
among  the  Padoucas,  144. 

Bourlamaque  at  Quebec,  378 ;  retires 
before  Amherst,  396 ;  at  Montreal, 
404. 

Bouquet,  Colonel,  in  the  south,  275 ; 
disagrees  with  Washington  as  to  the 
route  to  be  followed  against  Du- 
quesne, 388 ;  commanding  on  the 
Ohio,  397  ;  at  Fort  Pitt,  409 ;  warned 
of  war  with  Spain,  413  ;  in  the  Pontiac 
war,  438 ;  Edge  Hill  battle,  438 ;  in 
command  at  Philadelphia,  441 ;  his 
character,  442 ;  portrait,  443 ;  makes 
peace,  443. 

Bowen,  Emanuel,  maps,  22 ;  map  of 
the  southern  Indian  country,  383 ;  on 
the  source  of  the  Mississippi,  424,  426. 

Bowen  and  Gibson's  North  America, 
105,  140,  152,  196,  327-329;  on  the 
English  claim,  331. 

Braddoek,  General  Edward,  his  in- 
structions, 335  ;  sent  to  America,  354  ; 
plan  of  his  campaign,  355 ;  meets 
the  colonial  governors,  355,  356 ;  his 
treatment  of  the  Indians,  .355 ;  his 
character,  356  ;  Washington  joins  him, 
3.57;  his  route,  311,  357,  439;  map 
of  his  march,  358,  359;  his  force, 
3()0;  receives  express  from  Brad- 
street,  361 ;  his  defeat,  362 ;  his  losses, 
363  ;  map  of  the  battle,  439. 

Bradstreet,  Lieutenant-Colonel,  defeats 
the  French,  379 ;  takes  Fort  Fronte- 
nac,  38(i ;  colonel  in  command  of  an 
expedition,  441 ;  makes  a  treaty  at 
Presqu'  Isle,  441 ;  rebuked  for  it, 
442. 

Brant,  Joseph,  324. 

Brattleboro'  (Vt.),  162. 

Broad  River,  21. 


INDEX. 


467 


Broutin,  Carte  des  Natchitoches,  91. 

Bryinner,  Doug-las,  Beports,  201. 

Biiache.  maps  the  He'd,  of  the  West,  207, 
20',),  21(j;  on  the  source  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, 424. 

Buccaneers,  .')•"). 

Buffaloes,  S,  1.");  in  Ohio,  120,148,  150, 
450;  in  Virginia,  128,  220;  trade  in 
their  furs,  '<i-i-i. 

Buissonni^re,  lt)2. 

BuU,  g-ovemor  of  South  Carolina,  411. 

BuUett's  Town,  4:»T. 

Burke.  Edmund,  on  the  proclamation 
(17t)3).4:;o. 

Burke,  William,  418. 

Buruet,  governor  of  New  York,  takes 
possession  of  Oswego,  120 ;  strength- 
ens Oswego,  lO.j. 

Burnet's  Hills,  o45. 

Bury,  Viscount,  172. 

Bushy  Run  battle,  438;  map  of  its 
site,  4v}9.      See  Bouquet. 

Bussy,  410. 

Bute,  Lord,  minister,  417,  419. 

Byrd,  William,  of  Westover,  271 ; 
History  of  the  Dividing  Line,  161, 168. 

Cabot,  421 ;  his  voyages  as  a  basis  for 
England's  claims,  ol6. 

Cadadaquious,  9o,  153,  1.56. 

Cadillac,  Lamothe,  his  character,  72, 
85,  99;  founds  Detroit,  72;  opposes 
the  CompagTiie  des  Indes,  73 ;  sent 
to  Louisiana,  83 ;  arrives,  85 ;  anxi- 
eties, 94  ;  seeks  mines  in  Illinois,  99  ; 
recalled,  101 ;  watching  the  Span- 
iards, 111. 

Cahokia.  5,  146. 

Cairo  (111.),  70. 

Calf-pasture,  237. 

Calicuas  destroyed,  143. 

California,  Gulf  of,  201. 

Callot,  map  of  the  Mississippi  and  Kas- 
kaskia  rivers,  4.58,  459. 

Calli^res,  Governor,  53,  57,  58,  66-68; 
dies,  68,  73. 

Calumet  River,  24. 
■*    Campbell,  Captain,  at  Detroit,  407- 

Canada,  policy  of  trade,  57,  06  ;  limits 
differently  marked,  80  ;  bounds  on  the 
north,  88 ;  and  Louisiana,  both  claim 
the  Wabash,  149  ;  population,  88, 122, 
164,  223,  394,  405,  421 ;  GaUssonni^re 
governor,  223  ;  its  militia,  294 ;  as 
compared  with  the  English  colonies, 
324 ;  preparing  for  the  campaign 
(1755),  308  ;  confident  (1757-58),  385  ; 
despondent,  3S(i ;  deserted  by  the  In- 
dians, 394 ;  surrendered,  405  ;  Eng- 
lish claim  for  its  extent,  415  ;  Canada 
or  Guadeloupe  ?  417 ;  under  the  treaty 
(17()3),422. 

Canadian  River  89. 


Canahogue,  301. 

Capuchins,  157. 

Carlisle  (Pa.),  302. 

Carmelites,  157. 

Carolana,  4(i ;  named,  421.     See  Coxe. 

Carolina,  charter,  3 ;  character  of  the 
people,  18;  traders'  trails,  18,44.52, 
02  ;  frontiers,  45  ;  Sir  Robert  Heath's 
grant,  40 ;  taxes  Virginia  traders, 
131;  Indian  slaves,  133;  traders  on 
the  Wabash,  149 ;  grant  from  the 
Cherokees,  1()8 ;  Gee  on,  109 ;  its  dan- 
ger from  the  French,  170, 184  ;  traders 
among  the  Chick;isaws,  190 ;  traders, 
271  ;  tradera  on  the  Ohio,  2.54,  202  ; 
paths  to  the  Cherokee  country,  270 ; 
gains  land,  271  ;  charter  bounds,  319  ; 
threatened,  354 ;  bounds  extended, 
412  ;  immigration  from  Virginia,  445. 

Cartagena,  218. 

Cartier,  Jacques,  3,  13,  196,  318. 

Cartlidge,  Edmund,  175. 

Catawbas,  20 ;  and  Iroquois,  185,  234, 
200,  287 ;  position,  203 ;  friends  of 
the  English,  200,  272 ;  make  peace 
with  the  Iroquois,  271 ;  their  country, 
328;  sulky,  381. 

Catholic  Historical  Researches,  255. 

Catholics  in  Pennsylvania,  178. 

Caughnawaga  Indians,  224,  340. 

Cavalier  among  the  Ohio  Indians,  176. 

Cayahoga  River,  30,  244,  261,  305,  329, 
332. 

Cayugas,  228. 

C^loron  and  the  Chickasaw  war,  192  : 
starts  on  his  expedition,  252  ;  inscrip- 
tion on  his  plates,  253,  277  ;  buries  his 
plates,  254 ;  warns  English  traders, 
254 ;  his  journal,  255  ;  failure  of  the 
expedition,  250 ;  its  purpose,  277  ;  at 
Detroit,  285  ;  on  the  Ohio,  332  ;  killed, 
378. 

Cenls,  77,  90,  92,  93,  107,  142  ;  map  of 
their  country,  155. 

Champigny,  284. 

Chaouanons,  16.     See  Shawnees. 

Charleston  (S.  C),  143. 

Charleville,  Du,  .58. 

Charlevoix,  as  an  observer,  130  ;  his  jour- 
nal, 136  ;  his  Histoire  de  la  Nouvelle 
France,  130  ;  letter  to  the  Count  de 
Toulouse,  13() ;  at  Mackinac,  13(i  ;  at 
Kaskaskia,  140 ;  at  Kahokia,  146  ;  goes 
down  the  Mississippi,  150  ;  at  Natchez, 
150  ;   at  New  Orleans,  150. 

Chartier's  Creek,  293. 

Chat  (Indians),  143. 

Chateaumorand,  30. 

Chautauqua  (Schatacoin),  375. 

Chautauqua  Creek,  300. 

Chautauqua  Lake,  30. 

Cheat  River,  44(3. 

Chekagoua  River,  24.     See  Chicago. 


468 


INDEX. 


Cherokee  River,  mapped,  328. 

Cherokees  on  the  Ohio,  15  ;  their  char- 
acter and  country,  18  ;  linguistic  afl&n- 
ities,  20 ;  first  knowledge  of  them,  20 
form  a  barrier  for  the  Eng'lish,  122 
trails,  132,  168;  theii' importance,  150 
their  lands  and  grants,  168  ;  bulwark 
of  Carolina,  183  ;  treaty  (1730),  183 ; 
Adair's  account  of  them,  184  ;  and  the 
Iroquois,  185 ;  position,  263,  270 ; 
friends  of  the  English,  170,  265,  272  ; 
maps  of  their  country,  272,  273,  275, 
281,  295,  328,  383 ;  send  a  force  to 
help  the  English,  276  ;  English  facto- 
ries among,  281 ;  route  to  the  JVIissis- 
sippi,  327 ;  sulky,  381  ;  truce,  382 ; 
implacable,  411  ;  war  with  the  west- 
ern Indians,  434 ;  on  the  upper  Mis- 
sissippi, 462. 

Chicago  portage,  24,  117,  329 ;  danger- 
ous, 120. 

Chickasaw  bluffs,  6. 

Chickasaw  River,  21. 

Chickasaws,  20,  44,  47,  63,  64,  83,  133, 
142,  143  ;  have  English  firearms,  54 ; 
their  traders  on  the  Missouri,  114 ; 
trails  to,  132 ;  English  posts  among, 
153 ;  friends  of  the  English,  167 ; 
their  warring  impidse,  187 ;  Bien- 
ville's campaigns  against,  190;  their 
country,  190  ;  against  the  French,  223  ; 
position,  262,  2()5,  269  ;  disquiet,  264  ; 
site  of  their  fort,  265  ;  and  the  French, 
266 ;  go  to  Charleston,  266 ;  waver- 
ing, 274 ;  map  of  their  country,  383  ; 
gained  by  Stuart,  462. 

Chinese,  112  ;  trade  with,  112  ;  in  Amer- 
ica, 201. 

Chinooks,  6. 

Chippeways  (0  jib  ways),  22,  32,  81, 
119,  184,  264,  308;  and  Dacotahs, 
204. 

Choctaws,  44,  63,  64,  83,  133, 142,  153  ; 
pillage  the  English,  100 ;  and  the 
Natchez  war,  187 ;  in  the  Chickasaw 
war,  190,  191  ;  quiet,  268  ;  wavering, 
274 ;  map  of  their  country,  383  ;  pa- 
ti'ol  the  Mississippi,  462. 

Choiseul  would  make  peace,  419. 

Chouteau,  433. 

Christiueaux,  112,  199. 

Clark's  Fork,  32. 

Cleveland,  30,  165,  406. 

Clinch  River,  19,  230,  277,  281,  292. 

Clinton,  Governor,  urging  a  colonial 
union,  221. 

Cluverius,  22. 

Coal  mines,  244,  245.     See  Mines. 

Colapissas,  448. 

Colden,  Cadwallader,  map,  25  ;  on  New 
York,  163 ;  on  encouraging  the  Indian 
trade,  163 ;  History  of  the  Five  Na- 
tions, 163,  220, 223,  333. 


Colorado  River,  32 ;  its  sources,  96. 

Columbia  River,  32,  138,  211,  322. 

Comanches,  8.     See  Padoucas. 

Compagnie  des  Indes,  73. 

Company  of  the  West,  102. 

Conestoga,  treaty  of,  163  ;  fort,  241. 

Congaree  River,  168,  271. 

Connecticut,  her  people  in  Pennsylvania, 
166 ;  disputes  the  rights  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, 346  ;  charters  the  Susquehanna 
Company,  346.     See  Pennsylvania. 

ContreccEur  attacks  the  fort  at  the  forks 
of  the  Ohio,  311  ;  his  force,  311;  at 
Duquesne,  357 ;  his  force  in  a  later 
campaign,  360. 

Coosa  River,  86. 

Cornbury,  Lord,  68,  71. 

Cosme,  17. 

Cotton  in  Louisiana,  271. 

Covens  and  Mortier,  maps,  216. 

Cowpasture  River,  364. 

Coxe,  Daniel,  167,  168 ;  Carolana,  127, 
138  ;  his  map,  44,  45  ;  his  grant,  46  ; 
and  the  western  quest,  217,  4.o2. 

Creeks,  20,  47,  153,  168,  183,  186 ;  posi- 
tion, 262,  267 ;  and  the  French,  266 ; 
wavering,  274,  275 ;  map  of  their 
country,  383 ;  warring  on  the  English, 
411. 

Cresap,  Colonel  Thomas,  his  career, 
251  ;  in  Maryland,  251 ;  surveys  a 
tract  over  the  mountains,  251  ;  Gist 
with,  282  ;  his  road  over  the  moun- 
tains, 311 ;  his  settlement,  312  ;  and 
the  Ohio  Company,  409. 

Cristineaux.    See  Christiueaux. 

Croghan,  George,  his  character,  249 ; 
sending  scouts  to  the  Ohio,  252 ;  his 
services,  280 ;  in  the  Ohio  country, 
282,  283 ;  map  of  the  sources  of  the 
Potomac,  283  ;  on  the  Ohio,  289,  290 ; 
confronting  the  French  at  Logstown, 
290 ;  urging  defenses  on  the  Ohio, 
303  ;  on  French  encroachments,  330  ; 
on  the  Half-King's  death,  341 ;  on 
the  French  blandishments,  342 ;  and 
the  province  of  Pennsylvania,  380 ; 
made  his  deputy  by  Johnson,  380 ; 
dealing  with  Teedyuseung,  382  ;  pro- 
pitiating the  Ohio  tribes,  387  ;  goes 
west,  405 ;  intercessor  with  the  Indi- 
ans, 408;  at  Detroit,  412;  fears  an 
Indian  war,  413  ;  at  Carlisle,  438  ;  at 
Fort  Bedford,  438 ;  sent  to  England, 
444  ;  sent  west,  456. 

Cromwell,  12. 

Crown  Point,  174. 

Crozat,  Sieur  Antoine,  and  his  farming 
of  trade  in  Louisiana,  85  ;  tried  to 
open  trade  with  the  Spaniards,  90  ; 
resigns  his  charter,  102. 

Culpepper,  Lord,  11. 

Cumberland  Gap,  230,  277. 


INDEX. 


469 


Cumberland  River,  10,  19, 230,  272, 273, 

278. 
Cuming,  Sir  Alexander,  183. 
Currytuck  Inlet,  278. 
Cutler,  Nathaniel,  Coasting  Pilot,  35. 

D'Abadie,  governor  of  Louisiana,  454; 
died,  454. 

D'AnviUe,  Admiral,  222. 

Dacotahs,  52 ;  their  counti-y,  204.  See 
Sioux. 

Dan  River,  221). 

Danekerts,  74. 

Danville,  map  of  Louisiana,  (3,  7,  48,  49, 
59 ;  maps,  95  ;  his  North  A7nerica, 
117,  147,  2GG,  294,  295  ;  on  the  souice 
of  the  Mississippi,  200 ;  represents  the 
French  claim,  o35. 

Daughertv,  20. 

Dauphine*^ Island,  59,  75,  108,  423,  449 ; 
attacked,  83. 

Davion,  43,  48,  50,  02. 

Davion's  Bluff,  4.50,  452. 

Davis,  A.  M.,  on  Moncacht-Ap^,  214. 

De  Fer,  Nicolas,  70,  78  ;  and  the  Lahoii- 
tan  story,  80 ;  La  Riviere  de  Missis- 
sippi, 104,  130. 

De  la  Noiie,  115. 

De  la  Tour,  80. 

De  Lancey,  Governor,  222,  303,  308, 
308. 

De  Soto.     See  Soto. 

De  Witt,  74. 

Dee,  Dr.,  318. 

Deerfield  attacked,  70. 

Degonnor,  Father,  193. 

Delaroche,  97. 

Delawares,  15  ;  in  the  Ohio  country,  148, 
107,  290 ;  on  the  Alleghany,  175  ;  out- 
witted, 239  ;  their  Ohio  villages,  244, 
247,  252,  255  ;  on  the  Susquehanna, 
240 ;  rupture  with,  341  ;  raiding  into 
Pennsylvania,  305  ;  Avar  with,  373  ; 
stUl  adhere  to  the  French,  394  ;  be- 
guile Bradstreet.  442. 

Delisle.  maps,  10,  20,  03,  74-70,  78, 103  ; 
map  of  the  Mississippi  (1703),  78  ; 
and  the  Lahontan  story,  80  ;  marks 
limits  of  Louisiana  in  a  way  unsat- 
isfactory to  the  government,  80  ;  and 
Bob^,  111 ;  his  lake  with  east  and  west 
outlets,  112;  bounds  of  Florida,  140; 
Carte  d^AmMque,  208;  and  the  Sea 
of  the  West,  210. 

Denny,  governor  of  Pennsylvania,  377. 

Derbanne,  94. 

Des  Plaines  River,  24. 

Detroit,  50  :  founded,  72  ;  its  trade,  73, 
74 ;  Cadillac  leaves,  83  ;  attacked  by 
Foxes,  90  ;  threatened,  248  ;  C^loron 
in  command,  285  ;  population,  285 ; 
its  character  and  communications,  285 ; 
to  be  strengthened,  334;  sunendersto 


Rogers,  40(i  ;  its  appearance,  400  ; 
neighboring  Indians  hostile,  412  ;  Aca- 
dians  in,  455. 

Dieskau,  leaves  France,  308 ;  wounded, 
309. 

Dinwiddle,  sends  Washington  to  the 
French,  303 ;  receives  St.  Pierre's  re- 
ply, 307 ;  correspondence,  307  ;  risk- 
ing war,  308 ;  his  character,  309, 340 ; 
urges  a  movement  against  Canada, 
310;  refuses  to  carry  out  the  terms 
of  Washington's  surrender,  315,  339  ; 
rebukes  his  house  of  burgesses,  340 ; 
vigilant,  340  ;  proposes  two  confed- 
erations of  the  colonies,  349 ;  on  the 
proposed  campaign  (1755),  352;  anx- 
ious, 354  ;  helping  Braddock,  300  ; 
urges  a  line  of  frontier  posts,  374  ;  and 
the  fortifying  the  passes,  370  ;  urges  a 
barrier  colony,  37(). 

Dobbs,  Governor  Arthur,  190,  455  ;  and 
the  northwest  passage,  422 ;  dies,  455. 

Dongau,  Governor,  11. 

Douay,  A.,  37. 

Douglass,  Dr.  William,  232. 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,  420,  429. 

Drake,  Samuel  G.,  183. 

Draper's  Meadows,  230,  340 ;  raided  by 
Shawnees,  304. 

Du  Boisson,  90. 

Dudley,  governor  of  Massachusetts,  69, 
71. 

Duluth,  3,  23,  78  ;  his  fort  on  Lake  Su- 
perior, 115. 

Dumas,  M^moire,  251. 

Dumas,  at  Duquesne,  370,  377. 

Dummer,  Jeremy,  72,  123,  102. 

Dumont,  plan  of  New  Orleans,  151  ; 
Louisiane,  213  ;  on  Moncacht  -  Ap^, 
213;  his  map,  205. 

Dunbar,  Colonel,  with  Braddock,  301- 
303  ;  his  pusillanimous  conduct,  305  ; 
his  camp,  439. 

Dunn,  Samuel,  on  the  sources  of  the 
Mississippi,  424. 

Duquesne,  governor  of  Canada,  210 ;  ar- 
rives, 294  ;  his  instructions,  331,  332 ; 
warned  of  Braddock's  expedition,  355. 

Du  Tisne  on  the  Missouri,  114. 

Easton  (Pa.),  treaty,  .380,  390,  408. 

Edge  Hill,  battle,  438.    See  Bushy  Run. 

Edisto  River,  1()8. 

Eel  River  Indians,  240. 

Egremont,  Lord,  422. 

Ellicott,  Andrew,  4.54. 

Ellis  at  Hudson's  Bay,  190. 

Endless  Mountains,  18,  258. 

England  and  her  colonies,  claims  in 
America,  1,  310;  rivals  of  Spain,  10; 
of  France,  131 ;  character  of  the  peo- 
ple, 10  ;  buy  fees  of  the  Indian  land, 
11,  323  ;  war  with  France  (1702),  68, 


470 


INDEX. 


(1755),  379;  with  Spain  (1739),  186, 
(1744),  220,  (17(32),  412,  417 ;  rise  of 
spii'it  of  indepeudence,  (J9 ;  treaty  of 
Utrecht  makes  her  the  first  nation  in 
Europe,  87  ;  of  Aix-la-ChapeUe,  225  ; 
diplomacy  with  France  (1755),  335 ; 
treaty  of  Paris  (17(33),  420  ;  traders, 
11  ;  cross  the  Alleghanies,  48 ;  on  the 
Mississippi,  100 ;  active,  220 ;  on  the 
Wabash,  243 ;  in  the  Ohio  country, 
243 ;  at  Sandusky,  248  ;  f aitliless  pack- 
men, 353,  408  ;  allies  among  the  In- 
dians, 125  ;  with  the  Chickasaws,  153  ; 
not  properly  supported,  242 ;  claims 
derived  from  the  Iroquois,  327  ;  pop- 
ulation of  the  colonies,  162,  164,  218, 
347,  421 ;  mixed  character,  12 ;  her 
colonies  seeking  confederation,  162, 
347  ;  mutual  jealousies,  185,  220  ;  con- 
gress at  Albany,  343  ;  crown  lands, 
167  ;  naturalized  citizens,  218,  445  ; 
sea-to-sea  charters,  232,  317,  319- 
321  ;  renounced.  420,  428,  447 ;  Ver- 
non's West  Indies  expedition,  218 ; 
newspapers,  218  ;  her  greatness,  420  ; 
extent  of  her  American  conquests, 
464 ;   westward  emigration,  445. 

Engle,  Samuel,  213. 

English  Pilot,  74. 

Ephrata,  240. 

Eries,  destroyed,  15,  88,  326,  329, 

Espiritu  Santo  Bay,  76. 

Evans,  Lewis,  maps,  14,  18,  239-241, 
243-245  ;  his  journey,  241 ;  his  Mid- 
dle British  Colonies,  304, 305,  336  ;  his 
map  of  New  River,  230 ;  proposes 
to  map  the  Ohio,  336. 

Fairfax,  Lord,  his  manor,  180,  232,  283, 

312,  313 ;  his  house,  233. 
Farmer,  Major,  at  Fort  Chartres,  462. 
Farrer,  map,  4. 
Fauquier,    protests    against    Bouquet's 

proclamation,  410. 
Fer,  Nicolas  de.     See  De  Fer. 
Five  Nations.     See  Iroquois. 
Flat-Head  Indians,  142.     iSee  Choctaws. 
Fleet,  the  Bo.ston  printer,  218. 
Florida,  what   the    name    covered,    76 ; 

bounds,  146 ;    becomes  English,  420, 

428. 
Fluvanna  River,  229. 
Fontaine,  John,  Journal,   129  ;    Memoirs 

of  a  Huguenot  Family,  278. 
Fontainebleau,  treaty  at,  418. 
Font^,  214. 
Forbes,    General   John,    to  attack    Du- 

quesne,  385  ;  weak  in  body,  387,  389  ; 

his  army,  388 ;  his  route,  388 ;  enters 

Duquesne,   391 ;    returns,   391  ;    dies, 

394. 
Forster,  J.  R.,  250. 
Fort  Adams  (Mississippi),  452. 


Fort  Alabama,  153. 
Fort  Assumption,  192,  265. 
Fort  Augusta,  266. 
Fort  Beauharnois,  145. 
Fort  Bedford,  438. 
Fort  Burd,  439. 
Fort  Charles,  321. 

Fort_  Chartres,   119,  122,  144,  150,  268; 
ruins,    121  ;    rebuilt,     361 ;      Stirling 
takes  possession,   457 ;  Callot's   map, 
458 ;  Hutchins's  map,  460 ;  Ross's  map, 
461  ;  Major  Farmer  arrives,  462. 
Fort  Chissel,  or  ChisweU,  387. 
Fort  Cond^,  153,  262. 
Fort  Cr^vecoeur,  120, 142. 
Fort  Cumberland,  358,  438. 
Fort  Dauphin,  201. 
Fort  Dummer,  162. 

Fort    Duquesne,    named   312 ;      Contre- 
cceur   at,   357  ;    rejoicing  over   Brad- 
dock's  defeat,  364 ;  position,  359,  375 ; 
blown  up,  391 ;  plan,  391. 
Fort  Edward,  126,  370;  Webb  at,  384. 
Fort  Frederick  (Crown  Point),  174,  175. 
Fort  Frederick  (Maryland),  374. 
Fort  Frontenac,  287 ;  taken,  386. 
Fort  Granville,  380. 
Fort  Laboulaye,  50,51,  75. 
Fort  La  Jonqui^re,  206. 
Fort  La  Reine,  195,  199,  201,  206,  207, 

320. 
Fort  Le    Boeuf,   297,  298,  301 ;  Wash- 
ington at,  307 ;  destroyed,  398 ;  aban- 
doned, 438. 
Fort  Le  Sueur,  147. 
Fort  Lt$vis,  404. 

Fort  rHuiUier,  52,53,  147,  204;  aban- 
doned, 54,  63 ;  destroyed,  140. 
Fort  Ligonier,  438. 
Fort  Loudoun,  272,  275,  375  ;  captured, 

411. 
Fort  Louis  (Mobile).     See  Fort  St.  Louis. 
Fort  Lydius,  126. 
Fort  Lyttleton,  375,  380. 
Fort  Maehault  (Venango),  311,  375  ;   re- 
ceives De  Ligneris,  392.    See  Venango. 
Fort  Mcintosh,  261. 
Fort  Massac,  map,  392,  393 ;    repaired, 

394. 
Fort  Massachusetts,  222. 
Fort  Maurepas,  42,  195,  199. 
Fort  Miami,    117,  247,  285,  329;  taken 
by  Nicholas,  248  ;  rebuilt,  248  ;    posi- 
tion, 261. 
Fort   Natchez,    265 ;    view,    453 ;    plan, 

451.     See  Fort  Rosalie. 
Fort  Necessity,  position,  313 ;  attacked, 

314. 
Fort  Orleans,  141. 
Fort  Ouiatanon,  120,  286. 
Fort    Pitt,    299;     position,    436;    mis- 
placed in  Scull's  map,  439 ;  attacked, 
438. 


INDEX. 


471 


Fort  Poutchaitiain  (Detroit),  72,  329. 

Fort  Priulhoinme,  demolished,  142. 

Fort  Kilev,  114. 

Fort  Rosalie,  7,  150;  built,  101;  .at- 
tacked, 187;  map,  189;  position,  350. 

Fort  Roiif>e,  195. 

Fort  Kouill^,  223.  287. 

Fort  «t.  Charles,  195,  198,  199. 

Fort  St.  Fraiiqois,  205,  2()9. 

Fort  St.  Jean  Baptiste,  91,  156. 

Fort  St.  Joseph,  117,  119,  329. 

Fort  St.  Louis  (Mobile),  04,  75,  413. 

Fort  St.  Louis  de  Calorette,  90. 

Fort  St.  Pierre,  198,  321. 

Fort  Santa  Kosa,  449. 

Fort  Shirley,  380. 

Fort  Snelling,  8,  9. 

Fort  Stanwix,  treaty,  444. 

Fort  Ticondero<;a,  the  French  at,  370. 

Fort  Tonibigbee,  202. 

Fort  Toulouse,  86,  153,  321. 

Fort  Vermilion,  8. 

Fort  Williain  Henry,  370  ;  threatened, 
382  ;  surrendered,  383  ;  massacre,  383. 

Fox  River,  French  post  at  mouth,  144. 

Foxes  (Indians),  22,  43,  74,  90;  attack 
Detroit,  90;  friends  of  the  English, 
118;  hostile,  144;  pacificated,  145; 
marauding,  145  ;  ferocious,  2()4. 

France,  her  claims  from  exploration,  1, 
254,  31(( ;  acts  of  possession,  3;  her 
rivals,  8;  war  with  England  (1702), 
68 ;  costume  of  her  soldiers  (1710),  84 ; 
loses  her  ascendency  by  the  treaty  of 
Utrecht,  87 ;  Louis  XIV.  leaves  the 
country  in  great  debt,  99;  facsimile  of 
bill  of  the  Banque  Royale.  103,  108  ; 
her  power  over  the  Indians,  IK) ; 
surpassed  by  the  English  in  trade, 
116;  bad  colonizer,  llti;  peace  with 
Spain,  152 ;  would  divide  America 
with  Spain,  160 ;  at  war  with  Eng- 
land (1744),  220;  her  settlements  in 
America,  map  of,  220,  227  ;  her  con- 
dition, 228  ;  her  fiu'  trade,  323  ;  free 
appropriation  of  land,  323 ;  to  inter- 
pose between  the  English  and  Spanish, 
332 ;  diplomatic  relations  with  Eng- 
land (1755),  334;  desires  an  Atlantic 
harbor,  341 ;  her  subjects  in  America, 
population,  347  ;  her  traders  faithful, 
.353  ;  declares  war,  379 ;  her  traders 
compared  with  the  English,  408  ;  ne- 
gotiates for  peace,  415 ;  proposes  a 
neutral  territory  west  of  the  moun- 
tains, 416;  treaty  with  Spain  at  Fon- 
tainebleau,  418 ;  encroachments  in 
America,  421 ;  her  failure  in  colonies, 
430. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  The  New  England 
Courant,  102;  on  the  Iroquois  aid, 
222  ;  in  Pennsylvania  politics,  232 ; 
his   Plain    Truth,  242 ;  holds   council 


with  the  Indians,  302  ;  on  the  German 
Catholics,  339;  at  the  Albany  con- 
gress, 344,  348  ;  uses  the  press,  348  ; 
his  plan  of  barrier  colonies  over  the 
mountains,  348  ;  on  the  failure  of  the 
Albany  plan,  350  ;  his  testimony  be- 
fore the  Stamp  Act  Committee,  330, 
350 ;  his  activity  in  Pennsylvania, 
354,  300 ;  assists  Braddock,  357 ;  to 
defend  Pennsylvania,  372 ;  on  the  re- 
tention of  Canada,  417,  419 ;  and  the 
Ohio  region,  44(5. 

Franklin  (Pa.),  311. 

Franquelin,  74,  76;  facsimile  of  map, 
77. 

Eraser,  Lieutenant,  456. 

Frazier,  John,  30(5. 

Frederick  of  Prussia,  395. 

French  Creek,  30,  297,  298,  301. 

French  Margarets,  244,  305. 

French  neutrals.     See  Acadians. 

Frontiers,  evils  of  the,  242  ;  vagrants  of 
the,  409. 

Fry,  Colonel  Joshua,  and  the  western 
quest,  216;  in  command  of  Virginia 
regiment,  309;  dies,  312. 

Fry  and  Jefferson,  Map  of  Virginia,  231, 
233,  236,  237,  312 ;  line  run  by  them, 
232. 

Gage,  Thomas,  with  Braddock,  362 ; 
at  Montreal,  420  ;  succeeds  Amherst, 
441 ;  plans  campaign  with  Bouquet, 
441 ;  proclamation  to  the  French  on 
the  Illinois,  462. 

Galena,  mines,  122. 

Galissonni^re  and  V^rendrye,  204 ;  in 
Quebec,  223;  to  colonize  the  Ohio, 
225  ;  sends  an  expedition  to  the  Ohio, 
252  ;  recalled  to  France,  256 ;  fearful 
of  the  English  on  the  Ohio,  284 ;  on  the 
English  encroachments,  335. 

Galphin,  George,  4ll. 

Gates,  Horatio,  with  Braddock,  362. 

Gee,  Joshua,  on  the  English  trade,  169, 
219,  229,  243. 

Genesee  River,  30. 

Gentil,  Abb^.  33. 

George  II.,  died,  405. 

George  III.,  proclamation  (1763),  428. 

Georgia,  Spanish  mines  in,  18 ;  charter, 
184;  .settlers,  184;  bounds,  184,  319- 
321,428. 

German  Catholics  in  America,  339. 

German  Flats,  164. 

Germanna,  107,  181. 

Germans  in  America,  12;  in  Louisiana, 

106,  110,    154;   in  Virginia,  128,  129, 

107,  178 ;  on  the  Missouri,  141  ;  in 
Pennsylvania,  238,  242,  251,  338,  376. 

Gibson,  I.,  243. 

Gi-st,  Christopher,  sent  out  by  the  Ohio 
Company,    282 ;  his  journal,  282 ;   on 


472 


INDEX. 


the  Scioto,  288 ;  his  route  in  Ken- 
tucky, 290,  291,  304  ;  sent  out  again, 
292  ;  meets  Indians  at  Logstown,  293  ; 
maps  the  Ohio,  304 ;  with  Washing- 
ton, 306;  his  house,  312;  his  settle- 
ment, 314,  358 ;  on  the  Ohio,  330. 

Gladwin,  at  Detroit,  413 ;  expecting  an 
Indian  outbreak,  434. 

Glen,  governor  of  South  Carolina,  280, 
288,  308,  354. 

Gooch,  governor  of  Virginia,  makes 
grants,  177,  179. 

Gordon,  governor  of  Pennsylvania,  174. 

Grafe,  L.  de,  36. 

Graffenreid,  De,  128. 

Gran  Quivira,  96. 

Grant,  General,  with  Forbes,  388 ;  de- 
feated, 389  ;  sent  against  the  Chero- 
kees,  411 ;  at  Fort  Pitt,  442. 

Gravier,  Jacques,  57,  61. 

Great  Lakes,  undeveloped  geography, 
13 ;  water-shed,  27. 

Great  Meadows,  439. 

Great  Miami  River,  254.  See  Big 
Miami,  and  Miami. 

Great  Slave  Lake,  8. 

Green  Bay,  116;  portage,  21,  29,  118, 
119,145;  map,  22,  29;  deserted,  120, 
144,  440  ;  settlers,  264. 

Green  earth,  48,  52. 

Green  River,  19,  32,  52. 

Greenbrier  Company,  390. 

Greenbrier  River,  232. 

Greenhow  on  the  Oregon  question,  214. 

Grimaldi,  Spanish  minister,  418. 

Guadeloupe  compared  with  Canada,  417. 

Guest's  house,  439.     See  Gist. 

Guignas,  Father,  at  Lake  Pepin,  145, 193. 

Guinea,  negroes  from,  154. 

Hakluyt,  316. 

Hale,  Horatio,  20,  330. 

Half -King,  a  Mingo  chief,  302  ;  protests 
to  Marin,  303 ;  meets  Washington, 
306  ;  at  the  forks,  311  ;  at  Fort  Neces- 
sity, 315  ;  dies,  341. 

Hanbury,  John,  London  merchant,  251, 
360. 

Hardy,  Governor,  379. 

Harmon,  Adam,  230. 

Harris's  Ferry,  240,  243. 

Harvard  College,  class  rank,  12. 

Hat-making,  174. 

Haviland,  General,  404. 

Hawkins,  corrects  Mitchell's  map,  301. 

Hazard,  Samuel,  371. 

Heath,  Sir  Robert,  46. 

Heathcote,  Colonel,  124. 

Hendrick,  the  Mohawk,  255,  308;  at 
the  Albany  Congress,  344 ;  in  the 
Lake  George  campaign,  369. 

Hennepin,  his  maps,  13,  76 ;  his  men- 
dacity, 38,  43,  76. 


Henry,  Alexander,  at  Mackinac,  407. 

Hill,  General,  123. 

Hillsborough      and     the     proclamation 

(1763),  431. 
Hite,  Joist,  178. 
Hockhocking,  244,  305,  329. 
Hocquart,  176. 
Holmes,  Admiral,  399. 
Holston  River,  19,  231. 
Homann,  148 ;   maps,  51,  93 ;  and  the 

Lahontan  story,  80,  111 ;  makes  Lake 

Winnipeg  the  source  of  the  Mississippi, 

115. 
Hopkins,  Stephen,  344. 
Horses,   procured  by  the   French   from 

the  Spanish,  84. 
Houmas,  38,  40,  44,  49,  64,  107,  448. 
Howard,  John,  319. 
Howe,  Lord,  killed,  386. 
Howells,  Map  of  Pennsylvania,  297. 
Hubert,  Sieur,  111,  154. 
Hudson  Bay  Company,  88  ;  bounds,  196. 
Hudson's    Bay,    French     and    English 

rivalry,    2  ;  English,  established  here 

by  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  seek  to  push 

west,  115  ;  English  at,  196,  208  ;  map, 

421. 
Huguenots,  178,  225. 
Humphreys   and   Abbot's   map    (1861), 

9,  19,  27,  31,  41,  89. 
Hunter,  Robert,  governor  of  New  York 

and  Virginia,  88,  123. 
Hurons,  285  ;  near  Sandusky,  248  ;  de- 
stroyed, 326. 
Huske,   map   of    the   English   colonies, 

327. 
Hutchins,  Thomas,  on  St.   Louis,  433 ; 

map  of   Bouquet's  march,  436,   437 ; 

map  of  the  Illinois  region,  460. 
Hutchinson,    Thomas,    at    the    Albany 

Congress,  344. 

Iberville,  his  parentage,  2 ;  at  Hudson's 
Bay,  2 ;  seeks  a  way  to  the  Pacific, 
2  ;  his  expedition  to  the  Mississippi, 
33,  36  ;  relations  with  Pontchartrain, 
35 ;  portrait,  37  ;  enters  the  Mis- 
sissippi, 38 ;  reports  to  Pontchartrain, 
43  ;  returns,  48  ;  on  the  Mississippi, 
54 ;  explorations  mapped,  54,  .55 ; 
confidence  in  the  Great  Valley's  future, 
60  ;  returns  to  France,  60  ;  in  Paris, 
planning  explorations  toward  Califor- 
nia, 62  ;  at  Biloxi,  63  ;  his  plans,  66  ; 
dies,  63. 

Iberville  River,  424,  448.  See  Acansia ; 
Ascantia. 

Illinois  country,  a  part  of  New  France, 
116;  map,  119,  121,  142,  148;  an- 
nexed to  Louisiana,  120,  148  ;  bounds, 
148 ;  furnishing  provisions  to  Loui- 
siana, 192;  an  Indian  country,  113, 
295,  329  ;  population,  259,  268,  462 ; 


INDEX. 


473 


life  there,  250,  2()0;  number  of 
French,  407 ;  tlie  country  should  be 
bought,  4.S2 ;  wheat  eultuiv,  447 ; 
English  attempts  to  occupy  the  coun- 
try, 4.")(i ;  Gage's  proclamation,  4t)2  ; 
some  French  remove,  402 ;  French 
house,  4();>. 

Illinois  Indians,  moving  south,  Gl,  2G2  ; 
Christianized,  84,  157  ;  claimed  to  be 
within  the  Iroquois  conquests,  90, 
327,  3:53  ;  friends  of  the  French,  118  ; 
depleted,  177. 

Illinois  River,  24  ;  mapped,  28. 

Indians,  numbers  in  the  south,  170; 
'■  AUeghanied,"  176;  their  paths  in 
the  Ohio  country,  132,  247  ;  Adair's 
history  and  his  map,  262,  263 ;  at 
the  south,  26(i ;  their  league,  305  ;  as 
affected  respectively  by  the  English 
and  French  policies,  323,  343  ;  gained 
by  the  better  trade  of  the  English, 
326,  350 ;  sell  prisoners,  353 ;  and 
Braddock's  expedition,  355  ;  tedious 
in  negotiations,  356 ;  their  hunting- 
grounds,  407,  432  ;  protected  by  proc- 
lamation, 430 ;  becoming  incensed, 
433 ;  policy  of  gifts  to  them,  433 ;  a 
reservation  for  them,  444. 

Inglis  family,  230. 

Innes,  Colonel,  364. 

Irish  in  Carolina,  271.    See  Scotch-Irish. 

Irondequoit  Bay,  174,  177,  250,  287. 

Iroquois,  their  commanding  position, 
13 ;  their  power,  15  ;  meet  the  Mi- 
amis,  15 ;  map,  25  ;  at  Lake  Michi- 
gan, 43 ;  and  the  western  Indians, 
56,  58,  67  ;  and  the  Jesuits,  58,  70 ; 
sought  by  English  and  French,  67 ; 
treaty  (1701),  67;  their  beaver-hunt- 
ing grounds,  67,  90,  148 ;  treaty 
with  French  at  Montreal,  ()7 ;  alli- 
ances, 69  ;  Jesuits  and  Protestant  mis- 
sionaries, 70  ;  Jesuits  expelled,  71  ; 
the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  88,  125,  160; 
relations  with  the  French,  118  ;  a  bar- 
rier, 122;  warriors,  decorated  by  Gov- 
ernor Hunter,  124  ;  the  French  in  the 
Onondaga  country,  124  ;  ready  to  as- 
sist the  English,  125  ;  divided  between 
French  and  English  interests,  125 ; 
trails,  1 25 ;  Tuscaroras  join  them, 
133;  raiding  south,  133;  their  tribal 
grounds,  1»')1 ,  agree  to  keep  their 
raids  north  of  the  Potomac,  1(53  ;  con- 
firm grants  north  of  Lake  Erie,  165  ; 
grant  lands  on  Ontario,  165  ;  on  the 
Ohio,  1 76 ;  disconcerted  at  the  Eng- 
lish failure  to  attack  Canada,  223  ; 
neutrality,  223 ;  council  at  Albany 
(1748),  224  ;  at  Quebec,  224  ;  attacked 
in  the  valley  of  Virginia,  235 ;  war- 
ring against  the  Catawbas,  235,  266, 
287 ;    claim   compensation   for  lands, 


235 ;  drive  out  the  Delawares,  239 ; 
seven  tribes,  244,  245 ;  in  the  Ohio 
country,  15,  290 ;  their  domination, 
325  ;  generiilly  friends  of  the  English, 
325;  their  country,  17,  325;  whether 
entered  first  by  French  or  English,  326; 
claimed  by  French  and  English,  326 ; 
their  conquests,  15,  234,  290,  326-328, 
333 ;  difterent  views  of  its  bounds, 
330  ;  deed  of  1701,  330 ;  their  persons, 
not  their  land,  subject  to  England  in 
the  French  view,  332  ;  treaty  of  1726, 
332  ;  cede  tract  on  Ontario  and  Erie, 
332 ;  decline  to  join  in  Braddock's 
campaign,  355 ;  uneasy  after  Brad- 
dock's defeat,  365  ;  brought  over  to 
the  English,  380;  conferences,  381; 
their  doom  announced  by  the  French, 
389  ;  their  warriors,  414. 
Itasca  Lake,  5, 9. 

Jackson  River,  365. 

Jaillot,  74,  115,  148 ;  erroneous  maps, 
116. 

James  River,  source,  129,  181. 

Janvier,  map,  415. 

Japan,  way  toward,  112. 

Jefferson,  Peter,  232. 

Jefferys,  Thomas,  Course  of  the  Missis- 
sippi,-iO;  American  Atlas,  169;  map 
of  V^rendrye's  explorations,  195  ;  on 
the  Sea  of  the  West,  216  ;  map  of  pro- 
posed neutral  territory,  416 ;  map 
(1760),  421  ;  on  the  source  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi, 206,  424  ;  connects  Lake  Win- 
nipeg with  the  Pacific,  426 ;  map  of 
New  Albion,  429 ;  map  of  the  coast 
of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  448,  449. 

Jesuits,  warned  out  of  New  York,  14 ; 
among  the  Iroquois,  58 ;  expelled,  71  ; 
jealous  of  traders,  73 ;  and  Cadillac, 
73 ;  and  the  Indians,  84,  124,  157  ;  at 
New  Orleans,  1.58  ;  improve  agricul- 
ture, 158;  in  Louisiana,  271;  ex- 
pelled from  French  territory,  447. 

Johnson,  Sir  William,  17  ;  among  the 
Onondagas,  224,  228  ;  arms  his  adher- 
ents, 243  ;  gets  one  of  Celeron's  plates, 
252  ;  among  the  Iroquois,  286  ;  news 
of  Marin's  expedition,  301  ;  as  man- 
ager of  the  Indians,  324  ;  his  Molly 
Brant,  324  ;  on  the  Iroquois  conquests, 
330;  on  the  Iroquois  alliance,  331, 
352  ;  at  the  Albany  congress,  344 ; 
restraining  the  Iroquois,  368  ;  prepar- 
ing for  a  campaign,  369  ;  wounded  at 
Lake  George,  369;  made  a  baronet, 
370 ;  treats  with  Teedyuscung,  379  ; 
at  Niagara,  398  ;  tact  with  the  savage, 
308,  407  ;  with  the  Indians  at  Detroit, 
412  ;  alarmed,  413  ;  urges  a  property 
line  to  protect  them,  432 ;  makes 
peace  with  the  Senecas,  441 ;  makes 


474 


INDEX. 


treaty  with  Pontiac,  445 ;  sends  Cro- 
ghan  west,  456. 

Joliet,  4,  6, 22,  318. 

Joncaire  among  the  Onondagas,  125, 
163  ;  his  influence,  124 ;  at  Niagara, 
125,  126 ;  on  the  Alleghany  Kiver, 
150 ;  accompanies  Celeron,  252 ;  among 
the  Iroquois,  286  ;  at  Logstown,  290  ; 
receives  Washington  at  Venango,  306. 

Jonqui^re,  La,  governor  of  Canada,  85, 
204,  223,  256 ;  his  instructions,  334 ; 
in  Quebec,  285,  288  ;  warning  Clin- 
ton, 286 ;  asks  to  be  recalled,  288 ; 
dies,  288. 

Juchereau  of  Montreal,  70. 

Jumonville  attacked,  312. 

Juniata  River,  239,  241 ;  portages,  18, 
127  ;  trouble  in  the  valley,  256 ;  de- 
serted, 367 ;  map,  345. 

Kahokia,  121,  268.     See  Cahokia. 

Kalm,  Peter,  sees  V^rendrye,  203 ;  his 
views,  219 ;  on  the  Albany  traders, 
250. 

Kanawha  River,  19,  229 ;  route  of  the 
Carolina  traders,  254 ;  map,  304. 

Kankakee  River,  24. 

Kansas  Indians,  140,  211. 

Kansas  River,  a  barrier  against  the 
Spaniards,  141. 

Kaskaskia,  56,  61,  84,  301  ;  becomes  a 
parish,  122  ;  receives  slaves,  122  ;  de- 
scribed by  Charlevoix,  146,  150  ;  ear- 
liest land  warrant,  146 ;  miners,  122, 
146  ;  Berthelot  at,  262  ;  and  the  Jesu- 
its, 447 ;  French  goods  in,  455  ;  map 
of  the  vicinity,  121,  459-461. 

Keeney,  J.,  319. 

Keith,  governor  of  Pennsylvania,  127, 
163  ;  on  the  English  claim,  331. 

Kelly,  a  trader,  272. 

Kennedy,  Archibald,  scheme  of  frontier 
colonies,  349. 

Kentucky,  earliest  house  in,  279  ;  region 
uninhabited,  326. 

Kentucky  River,  19,  292,  304. 

Ker,  John,  of  Kersland,  Memoirs^  158. 

Kerlerec,  271,  276,  454. 

Kickapoos,  107,  119,  144,  288;  their 
country  (Quicapous),  329  ;  waylay 
Croghan,  45(). 

Kill  Buck  Town,  261. 

Kingsford,  William,  on  Braddock,  357  ; 
on  Pontiac,  40(5. 

Kitchin,  Thomas,  map  of  the  French 
settlements,  226,  227;  of  Cherokee 
country,  272,  273  ;  map  (1763),  428. 

Kittanning,  239,  301  ;  Delawares  at, 
365. 

Knowles,  governor  of  Louisbourg,  274. 

La  Corne,  398. 
La  Forest,  83. 


La  France  (an  Indian),  196. 
La  Harpe,  Benard  de,  arrives,  106 ;  at 
the  Baye  de  St.  Bernard,  94,  152  ;  in 
the  Red  River  country,  95  ;  exploring 
the  Mississippi,  112;  on  Charlevoix, 
138  ;  anxious  about  English  encroach- 
ments, 149 ;  on  the  Arkansas  River, 
156. 

La  Jemeraye,  198. 

La  Jonqui^re.     See  Jonqui^re. 

La  Noiie,  157. 

La  Pointe,  198. 

La  Potherie,  Histoire  de  P  Amerique,  its 
map,  79. 

La  Presentation,  225. 

La  Ronde,  198. 

La  Salle,  4,  20,  24,  26,  74,  318  ;  on  the 
Ohio,  15 ;  tender,  21 ;  his  explora- 
tions, 34,  54 ;  his  Mohegans,  61 ;  his  ex- 
plorations the  basis  of  French  claims, 
90  ;  killed,  6,  155  ;  alleged  New  Eng- 
landers  with,  336  ;  on  the  Mississippi, 
452. 

Laclede,  founds  St.  Louis,  4-33. 

Lafitau,  Mceurs  des  Sauvages,  137 ;  his 
Carte  de  V Amerique,  137. 

Lahontan,  161 ;  and  his  books,  80 ;  his 
lake,  80  ;  fate  of  his  story,  80 ;  his 
Riviere  Longue  mapped,  82, 113,  424; 
discredited.  111. 

Lake  of  the  Assinipoiles  (Winnipeg), 
115. 

Lake  Borgne,  49,  50. 

Lake  Champlain,  occupied  by  the 
French,  174. 

Lake  Chautauqua,  252. 

Lake  of  the  Christineaux,  1 15.  See  Lake 
of  the  Woods. 

Lake  Erie,  map,  25,  27-29,  226,  244, 
245,  256,  425  ;  portages,  26,  244,  245, 
247,261;  southern  shore,  120,  249; 
proposed  fort  on,  127  ;  map,  143. 

Lake  George,  370 ;  Amherst  on,  395. 

Lake  Huron,  map,  25,  117,  119,  226, 
425. 

Lake  Lovelace,  188. 

Lake  Manitoba,  199. 

Lake  Maurepas,  49. 

Lake  Michigan,  portages,  24 ;  currents, 
26;  map,  27-29,  117,  119,  205,  226, 
425. 

Lake  Nepissing,  428. 

Lake  Nipigon,  V^rendrye  at,  193 ;  posi- 
tion, 195. 

Lake  Ontario,  French  vessels  on,  126, 
165, 287 ;  English  lands  on,  165  ;  map, 
25,  227,  425. 

Lake  Pepin,  9,  52,  144,  145,  147 ;  mis- 
sion, 193;  fort,  194,  264;  position, 
197. 

Lake  Pontchartrain,  42,  49,  50;  map, 
423,  448. 

Lake  Superior,  portages,  22  ;  early  map. 


INDEX. 


475 


28,  29,  117,  119,  205,  226,  321,  425; 
outlet  to  the  west,  77,  115  ;  vessel  on, 
198  ;    English  post  on,  41;). 

Lake  Winnipeg,  97,  1 15,  loO,  148;  sup- 
posed connection  with  the  Mississippi, 
114,  205,  o21,  42(>  ;  on  the  western 
route,  198,199,215;  connecting  with 
the  Pacific,  21(),  429. 

Lake  of  the  Woods  (Christineaux),  115, 
194,  197, 198. 

Lancaster,  treaty  (1744),  2;}5 ;  road 
agreed  upon,  237  ;  pack-saddles  made 
there,  2o8;  conference  (1748),  24o. 

Langlade,  Charles,  2(14;  at  Green  Bay, 
2(>4 ;  attacks  Pickawillany,  293 ;  at 
Duqiiesne,  odl ;  at  Fort  William 
Henry,  884  ;  leaves  Montreal,  404. 

Laurel  Creek,  231. 

Laurel  Hill,  439. 

Laurel  Ridge,  230. 

Law,  John,  and  his  career,  99 ;  portrait, 
100 ;  his  opportunity,  102  ;  the  Mis- 
sissippi Company,  102  ;  sends  over  set- 
tlers, 106;  on  the  top  of  the  wave, 
108;  Banque  Royale,  108,110;  Com- 
pany of  the  Indies,  108  ;  Quinqnem- 
poix,  108,  109 ;  flees,  110  ;  grant  on 
the  Arkansas,  156. 

L'Epinay,  an-ives  in  Louisiana,  101. 

Le  Blond  de  la  Tour,  154. 

Le  Page  du  Pratz,  arrives,  lOG  ;  Histoire 
de  la  Louisiane,  106,  213;  and  Mon- 
cacht-Ap^,  210  ;  his  map,  269. 

Le  Rouge  and  the  Sea  of  the  West,  214 ; 
his  map,  215;  edits  Mitchell's  map, 
301. 

Le  yueur,  his  expedition  north,  32,  48, 
52. 

Lead  mines,  86,  121.     /See  Mines. 

Lee,  Arthur,  338. 

Lee,  Colonel,  of  Virginia,  288. 

Lee,  governor  of  Virginia,  230. 

Lemaire,  IKi. 

Lemoyne,  Charles,  2. 

Lettres  Edifiantes,  120. 

Ldvis,  at  Quebec,  378 ;  defeats  Murray, 

.  ,.  403. 

Lewis,  Major  Andrew,  on  the  frontiers, 
354  ;  attacks  the  Shawnees,  377. 

Lewis,  Captain,  l%5. 

Licking  River,  292. 

Lignery,  De,  and  the  Foxes,  144,  146. 

Limoges,  Father  de,  90. 

Lingeris,  at  Ouiatanon,  288 ;  at  Du- 
quesne,  380,  387  ;  flies,  392  ;  defeated 
by  Johnson,  398. 

Little  Meadows,  211  ;  owned  by  Wash- 
ington, 311. 

Livingston,  Robert,  14,  56,  67,  69,  72. 

Loftus,  Major,  driven  back,  450,  452. 

Logan  (Indian),  239. 

Logan,  James,  of  Pennsylvania,  17,  24, 
124,  125,  166,  174. 


Logstown,  247,252,  261,301,  436;  its 
position,  282  ;  treaty  at,  293  ;  Croghan 
urges  its  strengthening,  302 ;  Wash- 
ington at,  306. 

Longueil  and  the  Chickasaw  war,  192  ; 
in  power,  289,  293. 

Loramie  Creek,  284. 

Loudoun,  Earl  of,  arrives,  378 ;  incom- 
petent, 382 ;  would  attack  Louis- 
bourg,  382. 

Louis  XIV.,  dies,  99,116. 

Louis  XV.,  228. 

Louisa  Fork,  230. 

Louisbourg  taken  (1745),  221 ;  restored 
to  France  (1748),  225 ;  attacked  by 
Wolfe,  386. 

Louisiana,  Danville's  map,  6  ;  capabili- 
ties, 33  ;  mapped,  34,  142,  143  ;  popu- 
lation, 62,  65,  83,  102,  151, 157,  188, 
259,  421  ;  disordered  life,  65  ;  limits, 
78 ;  defined  in  Crozat's  grant,  85 ; 
Cadillac,  governor,  s:j ;  marriageable 
g^rls  arrive,  85  ;  bounds  kept  vague 
by  the  French,  86 ;  stockades  built, 
100;  under  Law's  Mississippi  Company, 
102  ;  settlers  and  slaves  arrive,  102, 
106 ;  land  concessions,  104 ;  troops 
arrive,  106 ;  Germans  arrive,  106 ; 
supposed  mines,  108 ;  news  of  Law's 
flight  arrives,  110;  its  barriers.  111; 
becoming-  formidable  to  the  English, 
134  ;  northern  bounds  indefinite,  146  ; 
claims  the  Wabash  eovmtry  against 
Canada,  149 ;  neglected  by  France, 
152;  vagrants  in,  171;  Natchez  war, 
188 ;  becomes  a  royal  province,  1S8  ; 
Vaudreuil  in  command,  259 ;  Du- 
mont's  map,  265  ;  districted,  268  ; 
sugar  cane  introduced,  271 ;  Kerlereo 
governor,  272  ;  shut  off  from  France, 
276  ;  inciting  the  Indians  against  Car- 
olina, 411  ;  transferred  to  Spain,  418; 
map  made  for  the  Compagnie  Fran- 
gaise,  423 ;  cession  to  Spain  made 
known,  454 ;  UUoa  arrives,  454  ;  Aca- 
dians  arrive,  455. 

Louisville  rapids,  14. 

Loups.     See  Delawares. 

Louvigny,  33 ;  sent  against  the  Foxes, 
118. 

Lowdermilk,  311. 

Loyal  Land  Company,  2.30,  277. 

Loyalhannon,  375  ;  Forbes  at,  390. 

Lugtenberg,  78. 

Lyman,  General  Phineas,  in  the  Lake 
George  campaign,  369. 

Lyttleton,  Governor,  his  expedition 
against  the  Indians,  272,  276  ;  attacks 
the  Cherokees,  411. 

Macarty,  268. 
Mackav,  168. 
MacKeUer,  Patrick,  362. 


476 


INDEX. 


Mackenzie  River,  8,  32. 

Mackinac,  its  trade,  74  ;  post,  118;  sur- 
renders, 407 ;  massacre  at,  440 ;  Indi- 
ans, 164. 

Madoc,  Prince,  200. 

Maldonado,  214. 

Mallet,  200. 

Maltravers,  Lord,  46. 

Mandaus,  109;  described,  200,  203; 
their  river,  97,  195,  426. 

Marameg-  mines,  104,  105. 

Marcel,  Reproductions,  23,  28,  29. 

Marest,  Gabriel,  57. 

Margry's  Collection,  52,  255  ;  on  V^ren- 
drye's  explorations,  201. 

Marin,  Sieur,  at  Green  Bay,  204 ;  sent  to 
the  Ohio,  300  ;  dies,  303. 

Marquette,  4,  5,  16,  318,  321  ;  recol- 
lected, ()2  ;  belief  in  a  westward  way 
by  the  Missouri,  78. 

Marshall,  O.  H.,  Historical  Writings,  255. 

Maryland,  and  the  treaty  of  Lancaster, 
236  ;  boundary  disputes,  279  ;  French 
settlers  in,  339  ;  raided,  376. 

Maseoutius,  117, 144, 288  ;  their  country, 
329  ;  waylay  Croghan,  456. 

Massachusetts,  provincial  charter,  322. 

Massawomekes,  16. 

Massonites,  156. 

Matagorda,  152. 

Mauniee  River,  26,  30 ;  portage,  118, 
119,  149;  English  traders,  120;  fort 
on  the,  255 ;  earlier  called  Miami, 
which  see. 

Maury,  James,  and  the  Sea  of  the  West, 
216  ;  on  the  Ohio  country,  336. 

Mayo,  Colonel  William,  179. 

McGilwray,  Lachlan,  411. 

McKee,  Alexander,  413. 

McKee.  Thomas,  345. 

MeUo,  Portuguese  minister,  420. 

Membr^,  journal,  40. 

Memoires  des  Commissaires  du  Boi,  319. 

Mercator,  3 ;  and  the  Appalachians,  13 ; 
his  physiography  of  North  America, 
317. 

Mercer,  Lieutenant-Colonel,  at  Pitts- 
burgh, 392. 

Mermet,  Father,  84,  128. 

Messager,  Father,  198. 

Mexico,  Gulf  of,  defective  cartography, 
35,  38  ;  modern  map,  41  ;  early  maps, 
44, 45,  51, 55, 59  ;  mapped  by  Franque- 
lin,  77  ;  in  La  Potherie's  map,  79. 

Miami  River,  19,  247 ;  portage,  334 ; 
later  called  Maumee,  which  see. 

Miami  confederacy,  26,  282. 

Miamis,  15,  84,  143  ;  make  peace  with 
the  Senecas,  70 ;  divided  between 
English  and  French,  70 ;  send  embassy 
to  Albany,  71  ;  English  traders  among, 
149 ;  called  Twightwees,  243 ;  alli- 
ance with   the   English,  243 ;  hostile 


toward  the  French,  246  ;  villages,  247  ; 
restored  to  English  favor,  249  ;  reject 
C^loron's  advances,  254  ;  attacked  by 
the  French,  284  ;  sue  for  peace,  294  ; 
their  country,  295,  305,  329. 

Michigan  peninsula,  25  ;  supervised  from 
Detroit,  116;  the  supposed  physio- 
graphy, 116;  badly  mapped,  116,  117, 
119. 

Mille  Lacs,  9,  22,  80  ;  mapped,  81. 

Mines,  86  ;  copper,  70;  lead,  70,  86,  121, 
147 ;  in  Illinois,  120 ;  in  the  Appa- 
lachians, 134;  near  Kaskaskia,  146. 
See  Silver  Mines. 

Minet,  74. 

Mingoes,  16 ;  on  the  Ohio,  176 ;  their 
town,  247,  261  ;  a  branch  of  the  Sene- 
cas, 290  ;  their  origin,  413. 

Minnesota  River,  8,  9,  30,  32,  52. 

MLunisinks,  16. 

Minquaas,  333. 

Miquelon,  420. 

Miroir,  A.  du,  10. 

Mississippi  Company,  102  ;  map  of  Lou- 
isiana and  seal,  107. 

Mississippi  River,  its  existence  suspected, 
3,  318  ;  its  character  and  extent,  5  ; 
duration  of  passage  up  and  down,  5  ; 
its  surging,  5  ;  its  importance  slowly 
recognized,  6,  13  ;  mapped,  7,  34,  44. 
51,  55,  79,  107, 121, 142,  147,  153,  208. 
215,  226,  262,  265,  267,  321,  328,  329  ; 
map   of   its  sources,  34,  77,  79,  107, 

425  ;  English  Turn,  45,  49,  50, 75,423, 
448  ;  alleged  visit  of  the  English(1676), 
46  ;  mouths,  50,  51,  55,  318  ;  Fort  La- 
boulaye  built,  52 ;  its  source  conjec- 
tured and  sought,  58,  78, 137, 197, 204, 
206,  424,  427  ;  Franquelin's  map,  77  ; 
erroneous  course,  79  ;  called  St.  Louis, 
95  ;  the"  German  coast,"  110  ;  a  route 
west  from  its  source  supposed,  114 ; 
different  views  of  its  source,  114; 
source  in  Lake  Winnipeg,  115,  319, 
320  ;  upper  parts  within  the  Virginia 
charter,  127,  128  ;  called  Mischacebe, 
135  ;  absence  of  luissions  on  the  lower 
river,  157  ;  alleged  early  English  vis- 
itors, 217  ;  its  channel  the  English 
bounds  imder  the  treaty  of  Paris, 
422  ;  navigation  free  under  the  treaty, 
424 ;    connects    with    Hudson's    Bay, 

426  ;  connects  with  the  Pacific,  426  ; 
in  relation  to  the  Pontiac  war,  440 ; 
Jeffery's  map  of  the  lower  parts 
(1768),  448 ;  map  by  Lieutenant  Ross, 
450 ;  "  Cajean  coast,"  455  ;  Callot's 
map,  458  ;  Indians  quiet,  462. 

Mississippi  Sound,  42. 

Mississippi  valley  at  the  end  of  the  sev- 
teenth  century,  1 ;  its  character  and 
extent,  4 ;  its  upper  parts,  9  ;  entered 
by  English  traders,  318. 


INDEX. 


477 


Missouri  River,  its  length,  5  ;  heads  of, 
map,  31  ;  seeu  by  Marquette,  'i'l ; 
divides  of,  'i'l;  mapped,  aJi,  Hi],  2U5, 
321;  as  a  westward  way,  78,  200; 
fort  on,  80 ;  its  source  sought,  80 ; 
called  !St.  Pierre,  85  ;  source  unknown, 
97,  140  ;  tribes  on  the  upper  courses, 
111 ;  alleged  route  to  the  Pacific,  111, 
112,20(5;  mines,  112;  base  of  traffic 
with  Mexico,  112;  branch  leading  to- 
ward the  South  Sea,  1 12 ;  explored 
by  La  Harpe,  114  ;  by  Du  Tisne,  114  ; 
confluence  with  the  Mississippi,  map, 
121 ;  source  near  the  Pacific,  137,  138, 
426  ;  to  be  defended  against  the  Span- 
ish, 141  ;  Germans  on  the  river,  141  ; 
grants  on  the  river,  141  ;  traversed  by 
Moncaeht-Ap^,  211. 

Missouris  (Indians),  32. 

Mitchell,  John,  ou  the  Mississippi  source, 
206;  on  the  Iroquois  claim,  234,  331, 
335  ;  his  British  Colonies  (1755),  104, 
154,  155,  280,  332,  336. 

Mobile  and  its  communications,  268 ; 
English  at,  440. 

Mobile  Bay,  59  ;  selected  for  a  post,  62  ; 
occupied,  64 ;  life,  64  ;  map,  75,  423, 
449  ;   confused  mapping,  76. 

Mobile  River,  21,  51. 

Mobiliaus,  (34. 

Alohawk  River,  72 ;  Palatines  on,  14 ; 
trails  along,  14. 

Mohawks,  chiefs  go  to  England,  124 ; 
at  Caughnawaga,  224  ;  attack  La  Pre- 
sentation, 225. 

Mohegans,  162  ;  on  the  Mississippi,  61. 

Mohickans,  333. 

Mohoning,  261. 

Moingoua  River,  53,  113,  140,  205,  262. 

Molineaux  mappemonde,  317. 

Moll,  Herman,  24,  148  ;  and  the  Lahon- 
tan  story,  SO,  111 ;  his  maps,  96,  104, 
163 ;  map  shows  Indian  trails,  132  ; 
and  the  English  claims,  161,  330,  331. 

Moncacht-Ap^,  story  of,  210. 

Monckton,  General,  396  ;  at  Pittsburgh, 
403,  405  ;  commands  the  southern  de- 
pai-tment,  409,  410. 

Monongahela  River,  18  ;  settlers  on,  293, 
358,  359 ;  interlopers  on,  410 ;  map, 
439. 

Monopolies,  118. 

Montcalm  at  Quebec,  378 ;  takes  Os- 
wego, 379 ;  at  Ticonderoga,  379  ;  de- 
spairs of  success,  .'594 ;  disputes  with 
Vaudreuil,  395 ;  made  military  head, 
395 ;  awaiting  attack,  396 ;  killed, 
401. 

Montesquieu,  171.  228. 

Montgomery,  Sir  Robert,  his  grant,  134. 

Moutigny,  43,  56. 

Montour,  Andrew,  71,  236  ;  in  the  Ohio 
country,    282,   284,   290;    needed  by 


Washington,  312 ;    trying    to  appease 

the  Indians,  365. 
Montour,  Madame,  124,  236. 
Montreal,  treaty  at  (1701),  14,  67;  held 

by  Vaudreuil,  404  ;   surrendered,  404. 
Moore,  Colonel,  and  Carolina  forces,  64 ; 

campaign  against  the  Tuscaroras,  133. 
Morand  attacks  the  Foxes,  264. 
Moravians    migrate    from     Georgia    to 

Pennsylvania,    1S6,    258;    settlement, 

261 ;  moving  west,  445. 
Morgan,  settler  on  the  Shenandoah,  167. 
Morris,  Governor,  and  the  PeniLsylvania 

assembly,   341  ;  on  the    Albany  plan, 

350. 
Mortar,  the,  a  Creek  Indian,  411. 
Morton,  Thomas,  317. 
Mount  and  Page's  English  Pilot,  74. 
Mount  Braddock,  314. 
Mountains  of  Bright  Stones,  97,  195. 
Munseys,  341. 

Murray  (Lord  Mansfield),  219. 
Murray,  General,  396 ;  in    Quebec,   401, 

403  ;  advancing  on  Montreal,  404. 
Muskingum  River,  19,  30,  239,  245,  247, 

305,  329,  437. 

Nanfan,  Lieutenant-Governor,  67. 

Nash,  Beau,  228. 

Nashville,  87. 

Nassonites,  96. 

Natchez  Indians,  142,  268  ;  their  coun- 
try, 7,  54,  95,  187;  wars  with  the 
French,^10l,  187  ;  misplaced  in  Law's 
map,  107  ;  tradeis  among,  133  ;  Charle- 
voix at,  150,  157;  destroyed,  153; 
attacked,  157 ;  plan  of  town  and  fort, 
451. 

Natchitoches,  56,  95,  153,  268,  269,  321 ; 
occupied  by  the  French,  94 ;  garrison 
at,  154. 

Navigation  laws,  69,  172.  . 

Nelson,  governor  of  Virginia,  251. 

Neptune  Fratiqaise,  205,  426. 

Neuse  River,  133. 

New  Albion,  317,429. 

New  England,  frontiers  ravaged,  70,  71, 
1()4,  222  ;  relations  with  the  English 
occupation  of  the  Ohio  region,  122  ; 
rising  feelings  of  independence,  162 ; 
her  people  in  Pennsylvania,  166; 
trade  in  rum,  173 ;  privateers,  219 ; 
popidation,  219;  her  western  trade, 
232  ;  alleged  explorers  of  the  Missis- 
sippi from,  336. 

New  Hampshire  forests,  219. 

New  Mexico  trade,  78. 

New  Orleans,  portage  at,  38 ;  site,  42, 
49,  104  ;  Charlevoix  describes  it,  150 ; 
Dumont's  plan,  151;  laid  out,  154; 
described,  158  ;  Ursulines  arrive,  158 ; 
defenses  improved,  18S ;  servile  in- 
surrection, 188 ;  becoming  prosperous, 


478 


INDEX. 


192 ;  its  appearance,  259 ;  depends  on 
the  Dlinois  for  food,  259 ;  its  life 
under  Vaudreuil,  260 ;  fears  of  an  at- 
tack, 2(;4. 

New  River,  169,  229,  231 ;  source  of, 
278 ;  mapped,  291. 

New  York,  manors  in,  12 ;  Jesuits 
warned  off,  14;  spared  and  New 
England  ravaged,  70 ;  and  the  Cana- 
dian trade,  71 ;  threatened  by  the 
French,  68  ;  charged  with  being  neu- 
tral, 123 ;  charged  with  indifference 
to  Iroquois  ravages  on  the  other  colo- 
nies, 133 ;  claims  on  the  Ohio,  167 ; 
its  legislature  opposes  Clinton,  222  ; 
her  apathy,  308. 

Newcastle,  Earl  of,  222. 

Niagara,  French  post  at,  125,  164 ; 
strengthened,  165  ;  as  a  French  post, 
286  ;  threatened  by  Shirley,  367  ;  its 
importance,  378  ;  attacked,  397  ;  cap- 
tured, 398. 

Niagara  River,  English  acquire  land  on, 
441. 

Nicholas,  a  Huron  chief,  his  conspiracy, 
248. 

Nicollet,  Jean,  22,  206. 

Niverville,  Chevalier  de,  206,210. 

North  America,  estimated  width,  3  ;  its 
central  trough,  6  ;  its  physiography 
misconceived  by  Mercator,  13 ;  La 
Potherie's  map,  79 ;  Lafitau's  map, 
137  ;  Bowen  and  Gibson's  map,  152 ; 
map  (1755),  427. 

North  Carolina,  English  in,  1 ;  its 
assembly  urged  to  support  the  war, 
342. 

Northwest  passage,  421  ;  English  pre- 
mium offered  for  its  discovery,  210; 
probability  of  it,  213. 

Noyen,  De,  30. 

Ochagach.     See  Otehaga. 

Ocmulgee  River,  135. 

Oconee  River,  135. 

Ogdensburg,  225. 

Oglethorpe,  making  pacts  with  the  In- 
dians, 184. 

Ohio,  State  of,  first  white  child  born  in, 
444 ;  first  white  man's  house  in,  445. 

Ohio  Company,  2.50,  280;  receives  its 
grant,  277  ;  sends  out  Gist,  282,  292  ; 
petitions  for  a  location,  292  ;  and  the 
war,  307  ;  its  storehouse  at  Red  Stone 
Creek,  311 ;  favored  by  Newcastle, 
360  ;  seeking  Bouquet's  influence,  409. 

Ohio  River,  character  of  its  basin,  14; 
its  freshets,  14  ;  Iroquois  on  the,  15  ; 
Shawnees  and  Cherokees,  15 ;  con- 
founded with  the  Wabash,  17 ;  ap- 
proach by  the  Alleghany,  17  ;  modern 
map  of  the  basin,  19 ;  maps,  28,  29, 
34,  294,  328 ;  early  reports  of  Eng- 


lish settlers,  35  ;  observed  by  Gravier, 
61 ;  called  Akansea,  61  ;  its  northern 
banks,  Qi) ;  the  country  sought  by 
Canada  and  Louisiana,  66 ;  claimed  by 
the  English,  66  ;  burning  springs,  67  ; 
English  trade,  71 ;  sometimes  mapped 
as  a  separate  stream  from  the  Wa- 
bash, 78  ;  called  St.  Jerome,  85  ; 
called  Alleghany,  119  ;  buffalo  com- 
mon, 120  ;  English  traders,  125,  249 ; 
called  Wabash,  143 ;  Charlevoix 
praises  its  fertility,  148  ;  the  French 
approach,  149  ;  its  mouth  observed  by 
Charlevoix,  150  ;  project  of  Galissou- 
ni^re  to  settle  peasants  thereon,  225  ; 
Franklin's  prophecy,  234 ;  Indians, 
234 ;  Evans's  map,  244,  245 ;  the 
straight  reach,  245  ;  Indian  trails,  247  ; 
Delaware  village  at  the  forks,  252 ; 
the  tribes  much  mixed,  253  ;  traders' 
routes,  278  ;  forks  of,  279,  296 ;  the 
Indians  to  be  trusted,  289  ;  map  of  its 
rapids,  297 ;  struggle  for  the  forks, 
300 ;  advantages  of  the  position,  300  ; 
character  of  the  river,  300 ;  the 
French  purpose  to  occupy,  302  ;  Gist's 
re-survey,  304,  306,  336 ;  rapids,  304, 
377;  elephant's  bones  found,  304;  in 
Bellin's  map,  306  ;  stockade  begun  at 
the  forks,  309 ;  captured  by  the 
French,  310 ;  English  factories  on  the 
tributaries,  328  ;  priority  on  its  banks 
claimed  by  the  French,  332 ;  Indians 
described  on  Mitchell's  map,  333 ; 
Evans's  proposal  to  visit  it,  336  ;  his 
account  of  it,  3;!6 ;  visited  by  Colonel 
Wood  and  Captain  Bolt,  421 ;  French 
residents,  432 ;  surveyed  by  Croghan, 
456. 

Ojibways.     See  Chippeways. 

Oldmixon  on  the  English  claim,  331. 

Oneidas  at  Caxighnawaga,  224. 

Onondagas,  228,  286 ;  conference  with 
Beauharnois,  177 ;  and  the  French, 
352. 

Orme,  Captain,  364. 

Osages,  105,  114;  entrapped  the  Span- 
iards, 141 ;  their  country,  205,  208. 

Osborne,  governor  of  New  York,  343. 

Oswego,  occupation  suggested  by  Bello- 
mont,  14 ;  Burnet  takes  possession, 
126 ;  trade  at,  163,  174 ;  diplomacy 
over,  164  ;  strengthened,  165  ;  getting 
most  of  the  Indian  trade,  176 ;  in 
danger,  221  ;  reoccupied  by  the  Eng- 
lish, 223  ;  feared  by  the  French,  228 ; 
rebuilt  of  stone,  250 ;  held  by  the 
English,  28() ;  attack  threatened,  286 ; 
reconnoitred  by  Piquet,  287  ;  seized  by 
the  English,  326 ;  traders,  346  ;  impor- 
tance of,  to  the  English,  352,  372; 
taken,  376,  379 ;  treaty  with  Pontiac, 
445. 


INDEX. 


479 


Otchaga,  194,  105. 

Otochita,  77. 

Ottagamis.     See  Outagamis. 

Ottawas.  17,  808;  near  Detroit,  120;    in 

Ohio,  -'47,  284,  28.J  ;   numbers,  414. 
Ottei-s  (Indians),  211. 
Ouabache,  17.     See  Wabash. 
Ouachipiianes,  1SJ5. 
Ouiatanon,  149  ;  Croghan  at,  457. 
Ouicapoux,  77. 
Outixgaiuis,  119,  147.     See  Foxes. 

Pacaud,  Jean, 73. 

Padoucas,  53,  9(5,  97, 105,  114, 140,  144  ; 
their  country,  208. 

Pako,  195. 

Palairet's  map,  97,  426. 

Palatines,  338 :  on  the  Mohawk,  14;  in 
New  York,  72  ;  arrive,  125,  120  ;  mov- 
ing west,  1()4  ;  leave  the  Mohawk  for 
Pennsylvania,  106. 

Panis  (Pawnees),  .53,  77,  96,  97,  112, 
114,  139,  140,  142. 

Paris,  frenzied  under  Law's  rule,  110; 
treaty  of  (1763),  420;  and  the  trans- 
Mississippi  country,  447. 

Parkman,  Francis,  202  ;  Half  Century  of 
Conflict,  158  ;  on  the  Iroquois,  330 ; 
estimate  of  the  number  of  Indians, 
414  ;  on  the  Pontiac  war,  435. 

Paseagoulas,  48,  59,  75. 

Patton,  Colonel  James,  179,  230. 

Pawlev,  Colonel,  272. 

Pawnees'  country,  113,  200,  207,  208, 
425.     See  Panis. 

Peace  River,  8. 

Pedee  River,  229. 

Pekitanoiii,  32. 

Pelham.  Henry,  220. 

Penicault,  3(),  52,  101,  141. 

Penn,  Thomas,  2.39. 

Peim,  William,  11. 

Pennsylvania,  her  frontiers,  127  ;  Penn's 
grant,  127 ;  traders  on  the  Ohio,  149, 
243 ;  Scotch-Irish  in,  1()6 ;  Quakers 
outnumbered,  l(i6 ;  traders  on  the 
'Alleghany,  167 ;  borders  encroached 
upon  by  the  French,  167 ;  traders 
complained  of,  230 ;  become  prom- 
inent, 238 ;  her  Dutch  population, 
238 ;  traders,  239,  254  ;  Evans's 
map  (1749),  239  ;  anti-war  assembly, 
242  ;  frontiers  fortified,  242  ;  trails 
from.  243,  300 ;  Moravians,  258 ; 
boundarv  disputes,  279 ;  refuses  to 
fortify  the  forks  of  the  Ohio,  280; 
York  County,  280 ;  Cumberland  Coun- 
ty, 280 ;  still  opposing  assistance  to 
the  Indians  against  the  French,  292 ; 
aroused,  302  ;  instructed  to  use  force 
against  the  French,  302 ;  assembly 
not  to  be  depended  upon,  308  ;  popu- 
lation, 338  ;  more  than  half  Germans, 


338  ;  the  Scotch,  338 ;  aliens  prepon- 
derate, 339 ;  assembly  uncertain,  341 ; 
at  last  votes  aid  for  the  war,  342  ; 
their  bad  faith,  353 ;  not  helping 
Braddock,  357  ;  tlie  borders  after 
Braddock's  defeat,  365 ;  apathetic 
Quakers,  366  ;  assembly  votes  money, 
36() ;  militia  act,  3(!6 ;  war  with  the 
Delawares,  373 ;  establishes  a  line  of 
frontier  posts,  373 ;  Catholics  in,  376  ; 
treaty  Avith  the  Delawares,  380  ;  bor- 
ders raided,  387  ;  farmers  exacting, 
387,  388 ;  authorities  embarrass  Bou- 
quet, -t38. 

Pensacola  founded,  10 ;  seen  by  Iber- 
ville, 36 ;  by  Bienville,  43  ;  site,  75, 
449;  taken  and  retaken,  106,  108; 
misplaced  in  Law's  maji,  107 ;  con- 
firmed to  Spain,  170. 

Peoria,  84. 

Pepperrell,  Sir  William,  at  Louisbourg, 
221 ;  colonel  of  the  Royal  Americans, 
354. 

P^rier,  Ren^  Boucher  de  la,  at  Lake 
Pepin,  145  ;  ordered  to  repel  the  Eng- 
lish, 149 ;  at  New  Orleans,  157  ;  the 
Natchez  war,  188 ;   recalled,  190. 

Perrot,  52,  78,  118. 

Petroleum,  245. 

Philadelphia,  treaty  at,  235,  252  ;  trails 
from,  south,  238,  240. 

Philip  II.  (Spain),  dies,  10. 

Pineda,  6. 

Piankashaws,  119,  246,  293. 

Picka^villany  founded,  247,  249,  255, 
284,  329  ;  destroyed,  293.  See  Pick- 
town. 

Picktown.     See  Pickawillany. 

Pigeon  River,  198. 

Pinet,  56. 

Pitt,  William,  228 ;  in  power,  382  ;  ap- 
points Abercrombie,  385 ;  planning  a 
new  campaign,  395;  the  victory  at 
Quebec,  403 ;  resigns,  417 ;  on  the 
terms  of  peace,  418. 

Pittsburgh,  279 ;  named,  392. 

Piquet,  Abb^,  his  zeal,  224  ;  at  La  Pre- 
sentation, 225,  287  ;  seeking  recruits, 
228 ;  stirring  up  the  tribes,  250 ;  Ids 
character,  287  ;  fearing  spies,  343. 

Platte  River,  32,  200. 

Pocahontas,  325. 

Point  Couple,  268. 

Pomeroy,  Seth,  369. 

Pompadour,  228. 

Pontchartrain  and  the  Compagnie  des 
Indes,  73  ;  and  Cadillac,  84. 

Pontiac  at  Duquesne,  361  ;  did  he  meet 
Rogers  ?  406 ;  his  conspiracy,  414, 
434 ;  map,  435-4.")7  ;  in  council,  434 ; 
at  the  Maumee  rapids,  442 ;  disposed 
to  peace,  456;  meets  Croghan,  457; 
his  character,  457. 


480 


INDEX. 


Popple,  his  great  map,  112,  183  ;  his 
lake  with  east  and  west  outlets,  11:^, 
113 ;  on  the  English  claim,  381. 

Port  Royal  (Acadia),  attacked,  123. 

Portages,  between  the  St.  Lawrence  and 
Mississippi  basins,  22 ;  of  the  Erie 
basin,  261. 

Post,  C.  F.,  sent  to  the  Ohio  Indians, 
389  ;  sent  to  the  Senecas,  397  ;  Mora- 
vian missionary,  445. 

Potomac  River  portages,  18;  supposed 
source,  127  ;  map,  233  ;  sources,  283 ; 
its  branches  mapped,  313. 

Pottawattamies,  84,  119,  434. 

Pouchot,  M^jftOiVe, etc.,  375  ;  at  Niagara, 
398. 

Poverty  Point,  62. 

Powell's  Valley,  230. 

Powder  River  Mountains,  202. 

Pownall,  Thomas,  map,  119;  Topograph- 
ical Description  of  North  America,  282  ; 
improves  Evans's  map,  304  ;  Admin- 
istration of  the  Colonies,  332  ;  plan  of 
barrier  colonies,  348 ;  urges  a  strong 
attack  on  Canada,  385  ;  on  the  source 
of  the  Mississippi,  424. 

Pragmatic  sanction,  220. 

Prairie  du  Rocher,  268. 

Presqu'  Isle,  30;  route,  286,  297-300; 
299,  its  position,  375  ;  taken,  438. 

Prideaux,  at  Niagara,  398. 

Puants,  Baye  des,  23,  116. 

Putnam,  Israel,  369. 

Quadruple  alliance,  106. 

Quarry,  Colonel,  69,  71. 

Quatrefages,  on  Moncaeht-Ap^,  214. 

Quebec,  merchants  at,  122;  in  danger, 
221,  223;  attacked  by  Wolfe,  396; 
surrendered,  401 ;  its  bounds  under 
the  proclamation  (1763),  428. 

Quebec  Bill,  330. 

Queen  AUiquipa,  359. 

Quinipissas,  40. 

Quinquempoix,  108-110. 

Quivira,  97.     See  Gran  Quivira. 

Raimond,  92.     -See  Raymond. 

Rainy  Lake,  198. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  316. 

Ramezay,  401. 

Randolph,  Peter,  271. 

Rapidan  River,  129. 

Rappahannock  River,  181. 

Raudot,  86,  111. 

Raymond,  Sieur,  249. 

Red  Lake,  9. 

Red  River,  40  ;  mapped,  7,  95,  153  ;  and 
the  Spaniards,  10  ;  its  basin,  89,  95  ; 
explored  by  St.  Denis,  90,  92  ;  Natchi- 
toches occupied,  94 ;  explored  by  La 
Harpe,  96  ;  mouth,  450. 

Red  River  of  the  North,  8,30,80,  81,82, 


97,  195  ;  connected  with  the  Missis- 
sippi, 426. 

Red  Stone  Creek,  311,  358, 446. 

Remonville,  De,  33. 

Renard,  141. 

Renault,  P.  F.,  122. 

Rice  culture,  18,  192  ;  in  Louisiana, 
271. 

Richebourg,  101. 

Rigaud  threatens  Fort  William  Henry, 
382. 

Rio  Grande  del  Norte,  10,  92,  138. 

River  of  the  West,  suspected,  78,  80,  97, 
112,  114,  130,  138,  142,  193,  207,  208, 
424,  426,  427,  429;  found  by  Mon- 
cacht-Ap^,  211 ;  mapped,  215. 

Rives,  WilHam  C,  278. 

Riviere  aux  boeufs,  300. 

Riviere  Longue  of  Lahontan,  82  ;  dis- 
credited, 112.     <See  Lahontan. 

Roanoke  Island,  8,  316. 

Roanoke  River,  292. 

Roberts,  English  cartographer,  426. 

Rocky  Mountains,  map,  31 ;  called 
"Mountains  of  Bright  Stones,"  97, 
195,203;  "Montagues  des  Roches," 
206. 

Rogers,  Robert,  sent  west  by  Amherst, 
405 ;  confronts  Pontiac,  406  ;  Concise 
Account,  406,  424  ;  on  the  sources  of 
the  Mississippi,  424. 

Roggeveen,  Burning  Fen,  39. 

RoUo,  Lord,  404. 

Romer,  Colonel,  66. 

Ross,  Lieutenant,  map  of  Mississippi 
River,  450,  460. 

Royce,  C  C,  16."" 

Rum  and  western  progress,  172. 

Russell,  James,  Map  of  the  Middle  States, 
261. 

Ryswick,  treaty  of,  2,  33,  330,  334. 

St.  Ange,  Louis,  on  the  Mississippi, 
150 ;  at  Vincennes,  177 ;  at  Fort 
Chartres,  444,  454,  456,  457 ;  gives  it 
up,  457. 

St.  Anthony's  Falls,  5. 

St.  Augustine,  8, 143  ;  attacked  by  Ogle- 
thorpe, 186. 

St.  Barbe,  mines,  107,  185. 

St.  Bernard's  Bay,  74. 

St.  Catharine's,  450. 

St.  Cosme,  43,  54,  62. 

St.  Denis,  Juchereau  de,  arrives,  48; 
exploits,  56,  64 ;  on  the  Red  River, 
90,  92,  192;  his  route  mapped,  93; 
again  among  the  Cenis,  94  ;  his  char- 
acter, 94. 

St.  Jean  Baptiste,  mission,  92,  93. 

St.  Jerome  River  (Wabash),  85,  119. 

St.  Joseph  River,  24,  25  ;  mission,  84 ; 
portage,  120,  146 ;  English  flag  on, 
457. 


INDEX. 


481 


St.  Lawi-ence  Gulf,  2. 

St.  Louis,  founded,  433 ;  position,  460 ; 
new  settlers,  402. 

St.  Louis  Bay  (St.  Bernard),  74. 

St.  Louis  River,  22. 

St.  Lusson,  3,  72. 

St.  Peter  River,  9,  32,  52,  140. 

St.  Philip,  4.JS,  460,  461. 

St.  Philippe,  268. 

St.  PieiTe,  Legardeur  de,  at  Lake  Pepin, 
ll>4 ;  follows  up  V^rendrye's  quest, 
204,  206  ;  his  journal,  206  ;  at  Quebec, 
210 ;  sent  to  the  Ohio,  303 ;  receives 
Washington,  307. 

St.  Pierre  Island,  420. 

St.  Pierre  River  (Missouri),  85. 

Ste.  Foy,  battle,  402,  403. 

Ste.  Genevieve,  268,  459,  460. 

Salley,  Peter  John,  319. 

Sailing,  John,  168,  179. 

Salmon,  Thomas,  Observations,  177,  182, 
185. 

Salt  works  on  the  Mississippi,  459-461. 

San  Antonio,  Texas,  10. 

Sandusky,  30,  244,  247 ;  portage,  120 ; 
English  at,  248;  position,  261,  301, 
329 ;  a  chief  centre  of  Indian  influ- 
ence, 282 ;  in  the  Pontiac  war,  435. 

Sanson,  maps,  26,  74. 

Santa  F4,  138 ;  its  position,  139 ;  Mal- 
let at,  200. 

Sargeant,  missionary,  242. 

Saskatchewan  River,  8,  201,  206. 

Sauks,  74,  118,  264. 

Sault  Ste.  Marie,  361  ;   abandoned,  440. 

Saunders,  Admiral,  396,  400 ;  carries 
Wolfe's  body  to  England,  401. 

Saussier,  268. 

Sauvole,  42,  48  ;  died,  62. 

Sayer  and  Jefferys'  maps,  117 ;  repro- 
duce DanviUe's  North  America,  147. 

Scalp  Point,  174. 

Schenck,  74,  78. 

Schuyler,  governor  of  New  York,  125  ; 
takes  Mohawks  to  England,  124. 

Scioto  River,  19,  244  ;  portage,  30  ;  differ- 
ent surveys,  305. 

Scotch  in  America,  12  ;  in  Pennsylvania, 
338. 

Scotch-Irish  in  America,  12  ;  in  Penn- 
sylvania, 12(j;  in  Maine,  126;  large 
arrivals,  16() ;  in  Virginia,  178,  180. 

Scull,  Williani,  Map  of  Pennsylvania, 
439. 

Sea  of  the  West,  30, 204, 214 ;  the  search 
for,  193  ;  mapped,  320. 

Sea-to-sea  charters,  3.     See  England. 

Seigneuries  on  Lake  Champlain,  175. 

Seminoles,  20. 

Senecas,  15,  58,  125 ;  and  the  French, 
286,  352;  and  the  Catawbas,  287: 
make  peace  with  the  Miamis,  70 ;  neu- 
tral,   223  ;    object  to  settlers  on   the 


Juniata,  256;  aggressive,  41.3;  and 
the  Pontiac  war,  4;j4 ;  uneasy,  440 ; 
make  peace,  441. 

Senex,  John,  and  the  Lahonbtn  story, 
80  ;  his  Map  of  North  America,  104, 
116 ;  on  the  Ohio  region,  148 ;  his 
maps,  163. 

Serigny,  63. 

Sewall,  Samuel,  11. 

Shaler,  Prof.  N.  S.,  12. 

Shamokin,  18,  175,  239,  241,  345,346; 
threatened,  365,  380 ;  fort  built,  373. 

Shanopin's  town,  359. 

Sharpe,  Governor,  taking  courage,  340 ; 
exercising  military  control,  353  ;  sends 
out  scouts,  376. 

Shartel,  248. 

tthawnees,  marauders,  15,  354  ;  in  Ohio, 
16,  148,  149 ;  vagrants,  16 ;  French 
trade  with,  87  ;  in  the  Virginia  valley, 
128 ;  called  Chaouanons,  143 ;  their 
temper,  175  ;  petticoated,  175 ;  visit- 
ing the  French,  176 ;  conquered  by 
the  Iroquois,  175,  234,  327,  333; 
driven  by  Delawares,  239 ;  sought  by 
the  French,  246,  308 ;  join  them,  248 ; 
their  villages,  255  ;  position,  263  ;  in 
the  Lower  Shawnee  town,  244,  288, 
290,  304  their  country,  328 ;  rupture 
with,  341  ;  attacked  by  Lewis,  377 ; 
leave  the  region  south  of  the  Ohio,  444 ; 
holding  out  in  the  Pontiac  war,  444. 

Shea,  J.  G.,  62. 

Shenandoah  River,  130  ;  first  settlers 
on,  178  ;  mapped,  181  ;  raided,  365. 

Sherman's  Creek,  258. 

Shikellimy,  239  ;  his  cabin,  240. 

Shining  Mountains,  426.  See  Rocky 
Moim  tains. 

Ship  Island,  30,  59,  75,  423,  448. 

Shippenburg,  240. 

Shirley,  William,  governor  of  Massachu- 
setts, 218  ;  on  the  capture  of  Louis- 
bourg,  221 ;  anxious  for  Boston,  222  ; 
would  attack  Crown  Point,  223 ;  at 
Paris,  322  ;  unduly  suspected  of  Cath- 
olic sympathies,  343  ;  colonel  of  Royal 
Americans,  354  ;  anxious  over  Brad- 
dock's  plans,  300  ;  his  son  killed,  362  ; 
planning  to  attack  Niagara,  367  ;  rank- 
ing officer  on  the  Continent,  367  ;  his 
career,  367  ;  disagrees  with  Johnson, 
368  ;  gives  up  the  Niagara  campaign, 
370  ;  commissioned  as  commander-in- 
chief,  372  ;  plans  a  campaign  for  1756, 
372  ;  receives  Washington  in  Boston, 
374  ;  recalled  to  England,  378. 

Shute,  governor  of  Massachusetts,  126. 

Siette,  De,  144,  145. 

Silver  mines,  99,  200.     See  Mines. 

Simars  de  Belle-isle,  94. 

Sinclair,  Sir  John,  387. 

Sioux,  32,  53,  58,  63,  74,  144 ;  at  Que- 


482 


INDEX. 


bee,  52;  their  country,  77,  80,  113, 
195,  197,  205,  208,  215,  425 ;  war  with 
the  Christineaux,  112  ;  tell  of  a  west- 
ern way,  114,  115  ;  pestilent,  115, 
118;  Charlevoix  urges  that  missions 
be  established  among  them,  138  ;  mis- 
sions to,  144 ;  at  Lake  Pepin,  145 ; 
furnish  furs,  176 ;  trading  with,  196 ; 
and  the  Rainy  Lake  Indians,  206 ; 
dangerous,  264.     See  Dacotahs. 

Six  Nations.     See  Iroquois. 

Slave  trade,  87. 

Slavery,  11. 

Smith,  Historical  Account,  435. 

Smith,  Dr.  James,  Some  Considerations, 
etc.,  141. 

Smith,  Captain  John,  16. 

Snake  Indians,  202  ;  then-  country,  195. 

Snake  River,  202  ;  map,  31. 

Soto,  De,  6,  13,  18,  20,  96,  105. 

Souris  River,  201. 

South  Carolina  becomes  a  royal  province, 
135. 

South  Sea  Company,  87,  161. 

Spaniards  in  Florida,  1  ;  rivals  of  the 
French,  8  ;  protest  against  French  oc- 
cupation of  the  Gulf  shore,  60 ;  allies 
of  the  French,  64 ;  on  the  Missouri, 
80;  war  declared  upon  (1718),  106; 
make  peace  (1721),  108,  152 ;  trade 
among  the  Panis,  139  ;  a  fatal  allure- 
ment to  the  French,  155  ;  approached 
by  the  French,  200  ;  thwarting  Eng- 
lish merchants  in  the  West  Indies, 
186  ;  war  with  England,  412  ;  receive 
Louisiana,  418 ;  cede  Florida,  420. 

Spanish  Armada,  1,  8. 

Spotswood,  Governor,  127  ;  urging  the 
occupation  of  the  Erie  country,  12U  ; 
ignorant  of  the  French  movements, 
128  ;  his  Knights  of  the  Golden  Horse- 
shoe, 129  ;  and  the  Iroquois,  163. 

Stahlmaker,  319. 

Stair,  Earl  of,  162. 

Stanwix,  General,  at  Philadelphia,  397. 

Stark,  John,  369. 

Staunton  (Va.),  179. 

Staunton  River,  229. 

Stephen,  Adam,  315. 

Stirling,  Captain  Thomas,  leads  a  force 
west,  457. 

Stobo,  400. 

Stoddard,  Colonel,  243. 

Stoddart,  Captain,  302. 

Stuart,  gains  over  the  Cherokees,  462. 

Sugar,  171,  271,  418,  447. 

Sugar  Loaf  Mountain,  128. 

Sunbury  (Pa.),  365. 

Surg^res,  Chevalier  de,  36,  42. 

Susquehanna  Company,  346. 

Susquehanna  River,  an  approach  to  the 
Alleghany,  18  ;  portages,  127  ;  forks 
of,  239  ;  map,  240 ;  Great  Island,  243 ; 


and  the  Iroquois,  326 ;  tribes  of,  833  ; 

map,  345. 
Swift  Run  Gap,  129. 
Swiss  in  Virginia,  72  ;  in  Carolina,  132  ; 

in  Louisiana,  154. 

Taensas  Lake,  5,  450 ;  mapped,  7  ;  In- 
dians, 40,  43,  56,  95. 
Tallapoosa  River,  86. 

Tanneries,  71. 

Tartan  inscriptions,  203. 

Tawixtwi,  201,  284,  305. 

Teedyuscung,  341,  346;  defiant,  373; 
brought  over  to  the  English,  379,  382, 
387,  389. 

Tellieo  River,  272. 

Tennessee  River,  16,  19,  20, 132,  143 ; 
valley,  167  ;  map,  272,  27^. 

Texas,  occupied  by  Spain,  10 ;  disputed 
by  the  French,  92,  96 ;   coast,  74. 

Thomassy,  Geologic  de  la  Louisiane,  91. 

Thomson,  Charles,  his  Enquiry,  etc.,  341 ; 
his  map,  345. 

Thoyago,  217. 

Ticonderoga,  attacked  by  Abercrombie, 
386. 

Timber  trade  in  Louisiana,  192. 

Tiniberlake,  Lieutenant,  412  ;  map  of 
Cherokee  country,  270. 

Tintons,  77. 

Tionontatecaga,  131,  143. 

Tobacco  in  Louisiana,  271 ;  trade,  171, 
192  ;  culture,  445. 

Tom's  town,  437.  ■ 

Tombigbee  River,  41,  190 ;  French  at, 
264,  268,  269. 

Tonacaras,  114. 

Toner,  Dr.,  edits  Washington's  journals, 
310. 

Tonicas,  7,  40, 43, 56, 62,  64,  95, 153, 450, 
454  ;  attacked  by  the  Natchez,  188. 

Tonty,  Henri  de,  at  his  Rock,  21 ;  in  the 
valley,  33  ;  his  journal,  33 ;  on  the 
river,  38,  40,  42  ;  his  letter  found,  42  ; 
his  popularity,  43 ;  his  route  to  Biloxi, 
50 ;  reaches  Fort  Laboulaye,  52  ;  ac- 
companies Iberville,  56 ;  at  Mobile, 
63  ;  with  Bienville,  64  ;  dies,  64. 

Tooley's  Creek,  169,  231. 

Toronto,  223,  287  ;  site  occupied,  126. 

Toulouse,  Count  of,  136. 

Townshend,  Charles,  294. 

To^vnshend,  General,  396. 

Trent,  Captain  WUliam,  280  ;  colonel  at 
Logstown,  293 ;  sent  to  the  Miamis, 
293 ;  at  the  forks  of  the  Ohio,  303,  309. 

Turgot,  162. 

Turtle  Creek,  359. 

Turtle  Mountain,  200. 

Tuscarawas  Creek,  445. 

Tuscarora  hills,  240. 

Tuscaroras,  20,  132,  134,  245,  437  ;  join 
the  Iroquois  confederacy,  88. 


INDEX. 


483 


Twightwees,  243,  289,  29o^  418  ;  French 
aiuung,  o41 ;  surrenders  English  prison- 
ers, 457. 

Ulloa,  reaches  Louisiana,  454. 

Unieoriia,  1 14. 

Urban,  Pope,  alleged  bull,  218. 

Urdinola,  F.  de,  10. 

Ursulines  in  New  Orleans,  158. 

Utrecht,  treaty,  85,  87,  160,  165  ;  pro- 
claimed, 88;  war  to  uphold  it  (1718), 
10() ;  affecting  the  Iroquois,  124,  234  ; 
on  tlie  Iiuliiin  trade,  165  ;  concession 
of  the  English,  322  ;  and  French,  331  ; 
the  riglit  to  trade  with  the  Indians, 
332  ;  rights  on  the  Ohio,  334. 

Valverde,  114. 

Van  Braam,  Jacob,  315. 

Van  Dam,  Kip,  174. 

Vauder  Aa,  115;  on  the  source  of  the 
Mississippi,  424—426. 

Vanmeter  grants,  178. 

V.arennes.     See  V^rendrye. 

Vaudreuil,  governor  of  Canada,  68- 
71,  73  ;  points  out  a  way  to  the  west, 
115;  disputes  with  Boisbriant,  148; 
attacking  the  New  England  frontiers, 
164  ;  dies,  164 ;  in  Louisiana,  251) ;  his 
court  at  New  Orleans,  260 ;  in  Que- 
bec, 368  ;  provisions  Duquesne,  377  ; 
thwarts  Montcalm,  396 ;  flies  from 
Quebec,  401 ;  at  Montreal,  403. 

Vaugondy   on    the    Mississippi    sources, 

204  ;  Amtrique  Septentrionale,  205. 
.Venango,    298  ;     Washington   at,    306  ; 
Fort  Machault,  .311 ;  burnt,  398  ;  taken, 
438.     See  Fort  Machault. 

V^rendrye,  ISieur  de,  his  career,  193  ; 
position  of  his  forts,  195 ;  his  equip- 
ment, 198  ;  his  journal,  201  ;  in  debt, 
201  ;  his  sons,  203  ;  his  last  years,  203  ; 
dies,  204. 

Vernon,  Admiral,  218. 

Verrazano,  his  voyage,  1,  316,  421 ;  his 
sea,  3. 

Vestal's  Gap,  233. 

Vetch,  Samuel,  71,  123. 

Villiei-s,  Chevalier  de,  attacks  Washing- 
ton, 314,  315. 

Villiers,  Neyon  de,  454. 

Vincennes  (town).  26,  84,  118,  149,  177, 
246 ;   population,  456. 

Vincennes,  Monsieur,  149. 

Virginia,  traders  among  the  Cherokees, 
20  ;  pushing  toward  the  Alleghanies, 
66  ;  Spotswood,  governor,  127  ;  val- 
ley of  Virginia,  177  ;  looked  into,  128  ; 
Germans,  128,  129  ;  trade  with  Cher- 
okees. 168 ;  trails  from,  168,  169 ; 
Cherokees  tramp  through  the  valley, 
180  ;  Keith's  map,  181  ;  new  western 
countries,  182  ;  her  people  on  the  Ohio, 


182;  grants  in  the  valley,  177,  229; 
roads,  229  ;  population,  128,  230,  374  ; 
the  Carolina  line,  232 ;  claims  land 
against  the  Iroquois,  236 ;  her  de- 
mands at  Lanciister,  238  ;  patli  to  the 
Cherokees,  2(5(i ;  Carolina  line  mapped, 
278  ;  disputes  over  bounds,  180,  279  ; 
Augusta  County,  279  ;  suffered  from 
the  counter-raids  of  Iroquois  and  Ca- 
tawbas,  287  ;  active  on  the  Ohio,  307  ; 
Dinwiddle  and  the  burgesses,  308 ; 
votes  £  10,000,  309  ;  most  western  set- 
tlement, 319  ;  early  charter  limits,  127, 
319-321 ;  later  limits,  322  ;  Scotch  set- 
tlers, 338  ;  burgesses  vote  money,  309, 
340 ;  support  Braddock,  357  ;  fron- 
tiers threatened.  373 ;  stockades  on 
the  frontiers,  374 ;  discontent  with 
Bouquet,  410  ;  emigration  south,  445. 
Voltaire,  228. 

Wabash  River,  17,  19 ;  portage,  26 ; 
called  St.  Jerome,  85,  329  ;  Fort  Oui- 
a;:anon,  120,  246 ;  Indians  warned 
by  the  French  against  the  Englisli 
traders,  128 ;  French  and  English  dis- 
pute over,  148,  158  ;  fort  needed,  149  ; 
called  Overbachee,  171 ;  English  trad- 
ers on,  149,  243  ;  French  grants,  286  ; 
mapped,  333  ;   French  remaining,  462. 

Walker,  Sir  Ilovenden,  his  failure  in  the 
St.  Lawrence,  123. 

Walker,  Dr.  Thomas,  and  the  western 
quest,  216 ;  has  grants  beyond  the 
mountains,  230 ;  crosses  the  moun- 
tains, 277  ;  his  journal,  278 ;  his  set- 
tlement, 281,  295,  328,  416;  on  the 
Tennessee,  411. 

Walker's  Creek,  277. 

Walking  Purchase,  177,  239,  242. 

Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  convention  with 
Spain,  186. 

Ward,  Ensign,  111,  310. 

Warren,  Sir  Peter,  221,  368. 

Washington,  George,  surveying  for  Lord 
Fairfax,  180,  232,  266  ;  sent  by  Din- 
widdle to  the  French,  303 ;  his  jour- 
nal and  map,  306  ;  at  Le  Boeuf,  307  ; 
lieutenant-colonel,  309 ;  his  letters 
revised,  309 ;  infornaed  by  Gist  of  a 
French  force,  312  ;  succeeds  Fry  in 
command,  312  ;  at  Fort  Necessity,  314 ; 
his  capitulation,  314,  339  ;  with  Brad- 
dock,  357 ;  his  horse  killed,  362 ; 
commands  in  the  valley  of  V^irginia, 
3(i5 ;  building  stockades  on  the  fron- 
tiers, 374  ;  in  Boston,  374  ;  consulting 
in  Philadelphia,  374 ;  and  Forbes's 
route,  388 ;  and  the  proclamation 
(1763),  430;  selecting  lands  on  the 
Ohio,  44(5. 

Washita  River,  187. 

Watauga  River,  410. 


484 


INDEX. 


Wateiford,  Pennsylvania,  300. 

Watkins  Ferry,  233,  278. 

Weas,  246. 

Weiser,  Conrad,  on  the  Mohawk,  12.5  ;  in 
Pennsylvania,  166  ;  mediator,  185  ;  on 
the  Ohio  (1748),  224;  at  the  Lancas- 
ter treaty,  236 ;  at  Logstown,  248 ; 
his  character,  250 ;  on  the  Catawbas, 
266 ;  observing-  the  Senecas,  286  ;  the 
Ohio  Indians,  342  ;  not  confident  in 
the  Indian  defection,  353  ;  watching 
the  frontiers,  365  ;    dies,  408. 

Welch,  Colonel,  explorations,  21,  46, 47. 

Wells,  Edward,  his  maps,  13,  76. 

Wendell,  Jacob,  162. 

West  Indies,  sugar  islands,  171. 

Wheat  in  Illinois,  447. 

White  Woman's  Creek,  437. 

Whitefield  and  barrier  colonies,  348. 

Whiting,  Nathan,  369. 

Whitney,  Josiah  D.,  202. 

William,  king  of  England,  dies,  68. 

William's  Ferry,  233,  238. 

William's  Gap,  233. 

Williams,  Ephraim,  369. 

Will's  Creek,  112,  243;  traUfrom,  279; 
map,  358. 

Winchester  (Va.),  178,374. 

Winnebagoes,  22, 115. 

Winslow,  General  John,  378. 

Winterbotham,  America,  260. 

Wisconsin  River,  misconceived,  22 ;  port- 
age, 21,  29,  107,  145. 


Wolcott,  Roger,  344. 

Wolfe,  General  James,  at  Louisbourg, 
396  ;  before  Quebec,  397,  398 ;  on  the 
Plains  of  Abraham,  400 ;   killed,  401. 

Wood,  Colonel  Abraham,  his  expedition, 
229 ;  in  the  Ohio  country,  421 ;  on  the 
Mississippi,  452. 

Wood,  Colonel  James,  230. 

Wood's  Gap,  229. 

Woodstock  (Va.),  179. 

Wyandots,  17,  239  ;  their  villages,  244, 
247,  255 ;  divided  between  French 
and  English,  282  ;  branch  of  Hurons, 
285 ;  their  country,  305 ;  surly,  412. 
See  Hurons. 

Wyoming,  241,  258,  345;  Connecticut 
claims,  346,  347. 

Yadkin  River,  229,331. 

Yamassees,  20, 132  ;  war,  133. 

Yazoo  Indians,  187,  210,  213. 

Yazoo  River,  41,  44, 153. 

Yellowstone  River,  divide,  31,  202. 

York,  Samuel,  68. 

York  (Pa.),  240. 

Youghiogheny   River,   279,  292 ;    map, 

358,  359,  439. 
Young,    an    Englishman,     beyond    the 

Mississippi,  133. 

Zeisberger,  239. 
Zenger,  125. 
Zinzendorf ,  258. 


